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From passionate electioneering, to graffiti on the waterfront, and finger-pointing mayoralty candidates, most Two Mountainers would probably admit that 2009 was an “interesting” year. What started out quietly enough promised to become much noisier in the closing months, knowing there was going to be an election for the first time in four years.
Election dominated
But while the campaign dominated the local news headlines in the last two months leading to the Nov. 1 vote, earlier on the controversy surrounding the future of the city’s Place de la Gare building, and outbreaks of vandalism and graffiti all over Two Mountains, were also getting attention. In a year-end interview with the North Shore News, Mayor Marc Lauzon listed some of the major accomplishments over the past 12 months of his administration.
Here are a few: the merger of Two Mountains’s and St. Eustache’s municipal courts, resulting in streamlined costs; a structural reorganization of the Olympia concert venue; the creation of a public fitness park next to the Polyvalente Deux-Montagnes, with the help of government subsidies; ongoing work refurbishing the water filtration plant; environmentally, the city launched its household composting program and became the second community in Quebec to enact a bylaw banning the use of plastic bags by retailers.
Kick-starting business
The City of Two Mountains is faced with a dilemma: it has exhausted the potential to grow its residential property tax base, leaving few choices for additional revenue. One solution the Lauzon administratrion came up with is to kick-start the city’s commercial sector, by encouraging new businesses to open in areas, such as on Chemin d’Oka. It is a wide-ranging plan that also includes the strategic development of some of Two Mountains’ waterfront parkland, such as Moir Park, and the Polyvalente Deux-Montagnes theatre project, to make the city more attractive as a leisure destination for people not necessarily from the area.
Businesses in the city would start to thrive with their support and the municipality would reap the benefits fiscally. Moir Park was chosen because of its emplacement on Oka Road away from residences and in sight of through-traffic. While there are complaints in city council from time to time from residents in areas such as along Chemin du Grand Moulin about transient traffic using the public waterfront, the administration does not anticipate such problems with its development scheme, because the parks chosen will be in non-residential areas.
Graffiti problem emerges
As picturesque as Two Mountains’s waterfront area is, it has not been spared the ravages of graffiti. Last summer as candidates for the mayoralty and council seats were getting their election campaigns into gear, city hall announced an anti-graffiti program involving strategically-placed video cameras. Costing $18,000 for each unit, the first was set up at the entrance ramp to the dam, which has been the target of a lot of graffiti. If the system works well at this first site, Two Mountains has a dozen more locations in mind where more cameras are likely to be installed. While police presence is still considered indispensible, the cameras will be providing 24-hour protection.
While the Place de la Gare controversy threatened at one point to undermine Lauzon’s chances of re-election, curiously enough it is now all but forgotten. “Certain people used it to frighten,” he said of the issue. “The de la Gare building, we had the choice to sell it or to lease it. In the end the option was to lease, but it was also a sale to be able to be able to lease it to an organization that belongs to the city. So am I still able to defend our position? Always. Did I do well? Did the council do well? Did our adversaries use it to spread disinformation or to frighten people? Yes. Did it work? Not enough to take us out of the picture. That’s all. And now effectively the debate is over.”
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