page_title: Michael Applebaum
section_title: Borough Mayor for Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce (2002-2012)
hierarchical_section_title: Michael Applebaum / Borough Mayor for Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce (2002-2012)
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Mairie de l'arrondissement de Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Montréal. English: Borough hall of Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Montréal.
context_page_description: Michael Mark Applebaum is a Canadian former politician who served as interim Mayor of Montreal between his appointment by the city council on November 16, 2012 and his resignation on June 18, 2013. He was the first anglophone to hold the post in over a century.
  On March 30, 2017, he was sentenced to a year in prison and two years probation for his role in extorting $60 000 worth of bribes from real estate developers as borough mayor in Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce between 2006 and 2012.
  Applebaum was first elected city councillor for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce on November 6, 1994 as a member of the now defunct Parti des Montréalais. In 2001, he would become a founding member of the Union Montréal party and rise to prominence as part of Mayor Gerard Tremblay's administration, serving as borough mayor of Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce from January 1, 2002 to November 21, 2012, and becoming chair of the city's powerful executive committee in 2011. He would be appointed interim mayor by city council after leaving the party as increased scrutiny of corruption within the administration prompted Tremblay's resignation.
context_section_description: In 2001, Applebaum joined other city councilors in forming the Union Montreal party under mayoral candidate Gérald Tremblay, a businessman and former Quebec Liberal cabinet minister. Applebaum and Tremblay would go on to win the 2001 election on a platform of halting the forced merger of Montreal with suburban municipalities  and decentralizing power to newly created Montreal boroughs during the 2002–06 municipal reorganization of Montreal. In 2002, Mayor Tremblay would appoint Applebaum to the newly-created position of borough mayor for Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. He would also now sit as chair of the borough's zoning committee (in French, Comité consultatif d'urbanisme) or CCU. They would be reelected handily in 2005 and 2009, each with almost 50% of the vote.
  By 2002, Applebaum's overall remuneration for committee work and expenses had grown to $102,868. Fellow councillors Jeremy Searle and Francine Senécal publicly criticized Applebaum in 2005 and 2008 for potential conflict of interest over his continued work as a real estate agent and property manager while also sitting on the boroughs secretive CCU (zoning committee). Applebaum once threatened to sue a citizen who pointed out that he should give up his real estate job if he wanted to sit on the CCU. He would only give up his realtor job and CCU position upon being appointed as a full member of the Montreal Executive Committee in 2009. Applebaum would also repeatedly reject proposals from councilor Warren Allmand to open CCU meetings to the public and to provide documentation on CCU zoning recommendations to the public before being adopted by the borough council. Allmand, formerly both the member of Parliament for NDG and Solicitor General of Canada, decried the lack of transparency in borough rezoning procedures. Councillors would often not know what they were voting on because they did not have time to review the CCU's complex zoning recommendations.
  Applebaum would find himself at odds with community groups over a number of public works projects in Benny Park in the underserved Loyola district of the borough. Local residents believed that the construction of a sports complex, a community health centre, and a cultural centre were eating into too much park green space.
  In 2007, the borough council moved already approved plans for a sports center on the residential development of Benny Farm across the street to Benny Park because of lack of space. Residents supported the construction of a sports complex, but objected to the new location and the rezoning of the entire park for institutional construction, arguing it would make the greenspace a target for further development.  In 2009, construction on the sports center began and plans for an ultra-modern library in the same park announced, further angering residents concerned about greenspace.  The sports centre would open in 2011.
  The closure of the Fraser-Hickson Library in 2007 also proved contentious. The foundation that owned and ran the spacious stone library requested $4 million in public money to help renovate the site. Despite a petition with 13 000 signatures and a tradition of volunteers to keep the library running, Applebaum refused the idea arguing that it would be more cost effective to include a library in the cultural centre. In the 2009 election, opposition Vision Montreal candidate David Hanna accused  Applebaum of neglecting to save the old library.  Although signs announcing the construction of the new facility went up before the 2009 municipal election, construction would not begin until 2013. Applebaum would explain delays by the city's careful review of technical documents to assure that bids for the project do not come in higher than expected. The new building would open to positive reviews in 2016, four years behind schedule.
  Residents would express similar environmental concerns in 2011 about zoning for a parking lot at a planned community health centre (CLSC) to be built by the province across the road from the park would eat up greenspace and cause traffic problems. Construction on
caption: Borough hall of Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce in February 2009
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