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Montrealers recently concluded a year-long celebration of the city’s 375th anniversary. It was an opportunity to acknowledge the ingenuity, industry and determination that helped build and sustain the city we inhabit today.

With unemployment at a 30-year low, global companies investing in the city, and a booming real estate market, ambition and optimism are the order of the day.

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All of which make the rhetoric surrounding a modest tax increase that much harder to reconcile.

Mayor Valérie Plante’s recently announced budget included a residential property tax increase of 3.3 per cent, slightly higher than the tied-to-inflation promise from her campaign. The mayor explained, not unreasonably, that this was due to an increase in the water tax to pay for necessary infrastructure upgrades. For the average household, the tax increase works out to about $10 per month.

Hyperbolic headlines, opposition politicking and a petition from an ardently anti-tax group have since dominated coverage and risk obscuring the wider public dialogue we should be having about how to build a fair, inclusive and prosperous city.