A citizen submitted a complaint to the Ombudsman de Montréal so that a verbal agreement reached in 2004, with Direction de l’évaluation foncière of Ville de Montréal, be respected.
The citizen submitted that under the said agreement, he had been asked to complete and return a document, within a specific delay, so that the City could re-examine the assessment of his property. However, he did not understand some of the information he had to provide and had tried to reach the employee in charge of his file, unsuccessfully. When he finally talked to another person who provided the needed explanations, the delay had expired and the department considered the agreement no longer binding.
Our investigation confirmed that there was such an agreement, in 2004, and that during the delay granted to the citizen for the production of the required document, the employee in charge of his file was indeed absent from work, for health reasons. As it appears, it was most likely because of this person’s absence that the citizen could not produce the required document in due time.
Following our intervention, Direction de l’évaluation foncière accepted to re-consider the file. As a result, the department analyzed the citizen’s information and reduced the assessment of his property, in accordance with the 2004 agreement.
New tax invoices were issued for the years 2004, 2005, 2006 and the amounts which had been overpaid will be reimbursed to the citizen or credited on his future invoices.
The intervention of the Ombudsman de Montréal thus allowed to gain the respect of the previous agreement.
