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The $200,000 doesn’t include the car. It does, however, include benefits and overtime for the driver and overtime for two existing city drivers who chauffeur high-ranking members of city council, assistant city manager Jacques Ulysse said.

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The chauffeur position is being created within the budget of the city’s real-estate management and planning department, for which Ulysse is responsible.

Coderre, like his predecessors going back at least 20 years, gets his own full-time driver who comes from the ranks of the city’s municipal security guards.

The city has three security guards, who are members of the city’s blue-collar union and who are paid about $53,000 a year plus benefits, assigned to drive the mayor, the chairman of the city executive committee and other members of the executive committee. The latter group shares the services of a driver.

However, Coderre’s designated driver this year has been one of his political staffers rather than a city employee. Ulysse explained to the Montreal Gazette that in 2015 Coderre’s driver has been paid from a budget envelope that covers the mayor’s political staff.

Coderre makes use of a chauffeur seven days a week and about 12 to 14 hours a day, Ulysse said. The blue-collar union objects to the schedule, he said, so the position was moved into the political staff budget.

In the past few years, the city has budgeted for three security guards to chauffeur the mayor and executive committee, and occasionally a temporary additional city employee, he said. The budget hasn’t forecasted overtime, so the cost of that has shown up at year’s end when the city compares what was budgeted and what was actually spent, he said.