158. The budget of the Community shall be submitted to the council not later than 15 November, at a special meeting convened for that purpose.
The meeting shall be adjourned as often as necessary and shall not be closed until the budget has been adopted. If there is no quorum, the meeting shall be automatically adjourned to 8:00 p.m. on the following working day that is not a Saturday, 26 December or 2 January.
The council may, on its own initiative, amend the budget.
The council is not bound to adopt simultaneously all the appropriations of the budget or of a part of the budget and thus may adopt an appropriation separately.
The council may also, before 1 January, adopt temporarily, for a period of three months, 1/4 of an appropriation provided for in the budget or in a part of the budget. The same applies before each period beginning on 1 April, 1 July and 1 October. The council may thus adopt at the same time(1) 3/4 of an appropriation if it does so before 1 April; and
(2) 2/4 of an appropriation, if it does so before 1 July.
If, on 1 January, the budget of the Community or a part of the budget has not been adopted, 1/4 of each appropriation provided for in the budget of the preceding fiscal year or in the corresponding part of that budget, with the exception of the appropriations mentioned in the seventh paragraph, is deemed to be adopted and shall come into force. The same rule applies on 1 April, 1 July and 1 October if on each of those dates the budget or the part has not been adopted.
The presumption of adoption and the coming into force provided for in the sixth paragraph do not apply to the appropriations provided for in the budget of the preceding fiscal year or in the corresponding part of that budget, which correspond(1) to those mentioned in the certificate of the treasurer referred to in section 157;
(2) to those then adopted separately under the fourth paragraph; and
(3) to those 1/4 of which have then been adopted under the fifth paragraph for the same period of three months.
In the hypothesis mentioned in the sixth paragraph, the appropriations mentioned in the certificate of the treasurer referred to in section 157 and included in the budget under study are deemed to be adopted on 1 January and shall then come into force.
The adoption, after 1 January, of the budget, a part of the budget or one of its appropriations in accordance with the fourth paragraph is retroactive to that date. The same rule applies to the by-laws and resolutions arising therefrom.
A certified true copy of the budget of the Community shall be transmitted to the Minister within 30 days of its adoption.
The Minister may order that the budget be transmitted by means of a form furnished by the Minister for that purpose.
2000, c. 56, Sch. VI, s. 158; I.N. 2016-01-01 (NCCP).For the purposes of the budget of any municipal fiscal year as of the municipal fiscal year 2017, the tenth and eleventh paragraphs of this section are struck out (2016, c. 17, ss. 40 and 141).