Vancouver city councillors could be topping up their annual budgets by $50,000 each this year.
That will, of course, depend on whether they want to do that.
A Feb. 11 memo from city clerk Katrina Leckovic to the 10 councillors outlines some options for them to consider in their quest to get more help to better perform their duties.
One of those options is adding another $500,000 a year to councillors’ current annual allotment of $300,000. That would mean a councillor’s total “discretionary budget” would jump from $30,000 to $80,000 per year.
The memo, which was posted to the city’s website Wednesday, doesn’t indicate when or if a vote will take place on a budget boost.
Leckovic’s memo is in response to a motion brought forward by Coun. Melissa De Genova in September 2021 regarding “effective and equitable staffing for council.”
First thought: Kind of interesting that this discussion is occurring in an election year when all 10 councillors have told me their names will be on the ballot in October.
To be fair, various current and former councillors have complained for years that they don’t have the support staff that other cities do to help keep up with their workloads.
Research done by the clerk’s office confirms that.
Edmonton, Toronto and Halifax all have one-to-one support for their councillors.
The current model for Vancouver councillors is that they share five administrative staff; it was only four until a fifth position was added in 2017.
Those five assistants primarily manage calendars, prepare responses to correspondence, conduct minor research, monitor and reconcile expenses and handle inquiries and complaints from citizens.
On top of that, some councillors have chosen to use their current allotted $30,000 a year to hire part-time political staff.
What do those people do?
I did a deep dive on this in January 2020, so I won’t repeat it here.
But here’s some of what Coun. Jean Swanson said at the time when asked about hiring a person do some part-time work.
“If I want to put forward a motion that some of the other councillors might not like, I can’t use my city hall staff to do that,” Swanson said.
“I want someone that’s aligned with my views. I don’t want to hire an NPA person to go out and meet with the people who want free transit and help me craft a motion on that. I want to hire people that agree with me.”
Added Swanson: “My role as a councillor is partisan. I want to stick up for people who are homeless, I want to stick up for low-income renters, I want to stick up for people of colour, Indigenous people, poor people, for lower-income people. That is partisan, and I need help to do that effectively and that’s why I hired [that person].”
In 2016, council approved an annual discretionary budget of $6,000 per councillor. That sum was boosted to $30,000 each in 2019.
“The rationale for the budget increase was to enable councillors to better meet the public needs and ensure timely responses to their constituents,” Leckovic wrote in her memo.
Leckovic points out that if councillors choose to add another $50,000 each to their budgets, that some of that increase could be offset by reducing the number of administrative support staff “as some of the duties would be delegated to the political staff.”
The memo doesn’t state the current budget for the five administrative staff.
Whatever council decides, Leckovic makes it clear that city hall’s executive staff does not want councillors’ political staff to have access to in-camera meetings.
“Staff do not recommend access to confidential information be extended to political staff as this is not the best practice in municipal governance and increases the risk of information being mishandled,” she said. “Council could, however, formally adopt a resolution to allow or disallow attendance of political staff at these meetings.”
All this said, I jumped on the city’s website to find out how much of that $300,000 allotted to councillors was spent last year. Turns out, it was only $70,046.32.
Coun. Colleen Hardwick spent the most — $20,440.48 on a political assistant — and De Genova wasn’t far behind, spending $20,000 on “media training and communication services.”
Coun. Adriane Carr spent the least at $747.73 on a political assistant, although she told me Thursday that her expenditure was pooled with Green colleagues Pete Fry ($877.77) and Michael Wiebe ($2,591.18).
Asked why council would need a top-up to the $300,000 budget when almost $230,000 wasn’t spent last year, Carr pointed out the motion that triggered Leckovic’s response was moved by De Genova.
“I feel we’re getting good support now,” said Carr, noting she and her colleagues would have spent more money, but their assistant took maternity leave last year.
The pandemic has also affected the number of in-person meetings Carr would normally have, which reduced scheduling and coordination time.
“Everything was by Zoom,” she added.
Carr was clear that she wouldn’t support a $500,000 top-up to councillors’ budgets, if it came to a vote.
“I can see how it wouldn't sit well with the public — it doesn't sit well with me,” she said. “I mean we've been cutting back so much, and it was just a brutal year in terms of the budget.”
Mayor Kennedy Stewart, meanwhile, has his own discretionary budget, which totaled about $1 million last year, with more than half of that used to pay for his political staff, which includes two chiefs of staff and a communications director.
De Genova’s motion was clearly aimed at Stewart, with her noting current city policies permit the mayor's staff to attend briefings with or in place of him.
The mayor's staff, she added, also “have the privilege of communicating with city staff on behalf of the mayor.”
The election is Oct. 15.
@Howellings
