City council will be talking money this week.
Once Mayor Gregor Robertson and his 10 merry men and women discuss the 2016 capital and operating budgets Wednesday and announce that taxpayers will likely face a 2.3 per cent tax hike, it will be on to the matter of how much money they should earn as politicians.
So what’s fair?
Sixty grand a year? Seventy grand? How about six figures?
As regular readers will recall, I’ve written about this topic a few times over the years, usually around the beginning of the year when an automatic pay hike kicks in for mayor and council.
That policy was established 20 years ago.
This year the increase was 0.82 per cent, last year it was 3.24 per cent. That translates this year to $155,612 for the mayor, $68,551 for councillors.
In 1995, an independent panel hashed out a formula to arrive at those figures. The panel decided councillors’ salaries should be based on the “average salary of a full-time employed person in Vancouver.” (I still can’t believe it’s $68,551. Seems high, especially when Statistics Canada shows Vancouver’s median income by family type in 2013 as $73,390.)
That salary would be adjusted annually to track changes in wages as reported to Statistics Canada, with the mayor's salary at 2.27 times that of a councillor. To further complicate the formula, the city bases its pay increases on the percentage increase of the average weekly wage for B.C.
Brain sore, yet?
Mine, too.
Anyway, back in February council unanimously agreed to have an independent panel review their salaries – and those of park board commissioners – to see whether they’re being fairly compensated.
After all, city councillors in Edmonton earn $99,994 per year, Calgary councillors pull in $115,297 while their Toronto counterparts collect $105,397. Toronto Mayor John Tory’s salary this year is about $177,000.
Well, the report is in.
Here are some of the panel’s key recommendations:
· The best way to determine councillors’ salaries continues to be the method established in 1995, where pay is based on the average salary of a full-time employee in Vancouver. The current method to determine the mayor’s salary should remain.
· The deputy mayor – that would be Vision Coun. Andrea Reimer -- should continue to receive a supplement equal to 22 per cent of the mayor’s monthly salary.
· The city should provide mayor and council with extended health, dental and group life insurance coverage equivalent to those benefits provided to exempt city staff. At present, mayor and council is eligible for benefit coverage but at their own expense.
· Have city staff conduct a review of council’s workload to see if the hiring of assistants to handle research, correspondence and other needs is warranted.
· An allowance should be provided to address the funding gap that city councillors face when leaving office.
· Park board commissioners, who are on the books to earn $8,000 each this year, should be paid more.
A staff report accompanying the panel’s review estimated the total annual cost of pay increases for councillors at $34,236 and health and welfare benefits for mayor and council at $33,528.
Another $16,176 would be set aside as a transition allowance and the total increase for park board commissioners would come in at $19,140.
We’ll see what council has to say about this at Thursday’s meeting. I’ll be getting paid to attend. I won’t tell you how much. I’ll leave comedy for another day.
@Howellings
