MONTREAL—Montrealers say they have had enough of corruption, crooked construction bosses and the meddling mafia, but not enough to stop the city from awarding a road-repair contract to firms implicated in wrongdoing.

In the streets and cafes of this city, everyone agrees the companies — some with alleged links to organized crime — have been the scourge of the past decade, rigging bids and fixing prices on municipal infrastructure jobs with the help of crooked politicians and bureaucrats on the take.

The anger grows with each new witness at a hearing of the Charbonneau corruption inquiry that has been charting the schemes in agonizing detail for months.

But the greater evil, it would appear, is the equally pervasive and iconic Montreal pothole.

And so it was that politicians of all stripes gathered last week at Montreal City Hall for a council meeting where they screwed up their faces, held their noses and cast their votes to award a $5.2-million contract for emergency pothole repairs to a consortium of seven companies, at least three of which have been linked to wrongdoing in testimony at the Charbonneau commission.

Councillors rose to speak of the dilemma they faced and this is what they meant: the current one-year contract to supply the city with asphalt expires at the end of this week, just as the spring season has sprung a fresh gauntlet of potholes upon Montreal’s frustrated drivers and cyclists.

The most prominent of the consortium’s firms, Louisbourg SBC, was founded by construction magnate Tony Accurso. The notorious figure, who is facing charges of tax evasion, fraud and municipal corruption, has been named as a central player in setting up the construction cartels in Montreal and surrounding cities.

Accurso gave up leadership of his lucrative empire last fall, but that hasn’t cooled the anger about Louisbourg possibly earning more than $2.2 million off the pothole job, plus the $193,000 destined for a smaller firm in the corporate universe he created.

Interim Montreal Mayor Michael Applebaum went so far as to conduct an online poll to judge the city’s mood about the contract. He revealed ahead of Friday’s vote that 60% of 5,200 citizen respondents were against the contract being awarded. But Applebaum, who was appointed by council colleagues to manage the corruption fallout after ex-mayor Gérald Tremblay resigned last November, endorsed the contract anyway.

“We have very few options,” said Marvin Rotrand, a city councillor who demonstrated a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the road-maintenance racket. “We can’t build an asphalt plant between now and April 15.”

The asphalt world, it turns out, has very exacting standards. For optimum repairs, the product must arrive at the offending road divot piping hot and right on time. That means that asphalt facilities over the years have been strategically located. On average, Rotrand said, they are no more than 24 kilometres from any possible pothole.

The result is that some of the firms who colluded to ensure taxpayer money went directly into their pockets over the past decade or so get to keep their lock on the business by virtue of their preferable geography. A suggestion that Montreal look at creating its own city-run asphalt depots was dismissed as a waste of money that would, in any event, do nothing to solve the immediate pothole problems.

As Rotrand said of the city’s dilemma: “When it comes to something as fundamental as potholes, you have to fill them.”

All hope is not lost, although it is a long way off.

The city intends to forward the asphalt contract to Quebec’s financial regulator, l’Autorité des marchés financiers, which is under new orders to audit any company competing for a contract worth more than $40 million. The results won’t likely be in until next fall, said Richard Bergeron, leader of the opposition Projet Montreal party.

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“To ensure they are put through this analysis, you have to vote for the contract,” he said.

“It’s our chance in voting for this contract to force (Accurso) to have to suffer this process. We will not miss this chance, even if it seems a bit paradoxical.”

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