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Ville Marie borough council

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The Ville-Marie borough council is the local governing body of Ville-Marie, a borough in the City of Montreal.

The Ville-Marie council has a different structure from all other Montreal borough councils. Before 2009, the council consisted of an elected borough mayor, two elected city councillors, and two elected borough councillors. Under legislation passed by the government of Quebec in 2008 and implemented after the 2009 municipal election, however, the council now consists of three elected city councillors, the mayor of Montreal (who automatically serves as mayor of Ville-Marie), and two councillors from other boroughs who are selected by the mayor. The current mayor of Ville-Marie is Denis Coderre, who was elected as mayor of Montreal in the 2013 Montreal municipal election.

At the first council meeting following the 2009 election, several members of the public expressed opposition to having a borough mayor and two councillors who were not locally elected.

Former members

  • Karim Boulos served on council from 2005 to 2009. He was thirty-nine years old during the 2005 election and had recently graduated from a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) program at Concordia University's John Molson School of Business; previously, he was a swimming instructor. On council, he was an organizer for the downtown cleanup campaign "Operation Montreal" and supported the imposition of harsh fines against littering and graffiti in Montreal's downtown core. In 2008, he promoted a new development program for the Seville Theatre. Elected as a member of Gérald Tremblay's Montreal Island Citizens Union (later renamed Union Montreal), Boulos joined borough mayor Benoît Labonté in resigning from the party on 17 September 2007 to sit as an independent. Labonté and Boulos formed an alliance with opposition councillor Pierre Mainville to retain control of the borough council, and Boulos served as deputy mayor. On 25 November, both Labonté and Boulos joined Vision Montreal. Boulos resigned from this party when Louise Harel was chosen as its leader in 2009, citing his constituents' opposition to Harel's Quebec sovereigntist views. He ran as an independent candidate for city council in 2009 and lost to Sammy Forcillo in the Peter-McGill ward.

    • References

    Ville-Marie borough council Wikipedia
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