Politicians voting to give themselves raises is typically met with derision and scorn.
Which is why council has approached a motion to increase their salaries with a great deal of care.
The increase in salary comes on the news that, as of this year, the Federal Government is eliminating a tax break that allowed Council to receive one third of their stipends tax-free.
This means that council would effectively be getting paid less for doing the same amount of work.
On December 17 of last year, Council passed a motion to adjust Mayor and Council’s annual remuneration amounts to compensate for the loss of a federal tax exemption.
The new bylaw will see the mayor’s indemnity increase to $31,487, up from $28,588.
Councillors will see their base rate increase to $14,161 for 2019, up from $13,273 for last year.
The new bylaw also adds a $100 stipend for councillors acting as deputy mayor; the District will also provide a cell phone for the mayor “to conduct municipal business.” This is already happening; the new bylaw just codifies it.
The District pays mayor and council on a flat rate compensation system, where each Councillor is paid a flat amount per month, “to compensate them for their work, and expenses are only paid out for costs incurred.”
The original proposal was to increase the mayor’s salary to $38,000, to reflect the amount of work taken on by the person in that position.
Mayor Bertrand says the position demands a lot of time, most of which is uncompensated. “I want to look at it as being fair,” he says. “In the last two months here, the time required, even $38,000 is nowhere near being fair. It’s also my choice to do that. I’d like to commit myself full-time to this position, because I think it’s warranted, but I also want it to be fair. I have bills to pay as well. Whatever this renumeration comes out to, that’s the time commitment I’m going to have to pay for this job. I don’t really want to lessen the duty I’m going to have, but I’m looking at it on a fairness aspect. That’s the outlook I’m looking at. Fairness. I don’t think you can expect anybody to do this mayor’s position for $38,000. That’s ridiculous, in my opinion.”
Councillor Howe argued that increasing the mayor’s wages by 35 percent two months into the new term was not a smart start. He wanted to hire a consultant to come in and review what council was making “If we hired someone that came in and said ‘yeah, it makes sense to give the mayor a 35 percent raise’, it’s a much easier pill for the taxpayer to swallow. We just did a compensation review package about a year ago and came up with these numbers here.”
In the end, though, both of these arguments lost out, with council deciding that a raise to offset the amount that was being lost was appropriate.
