St. Albert city council will debate a salary increase and full-time designation for council members again this spring, after widespread disagreement in a recent meeting led to a split vote.
Mayor Cathy Heron and other councillors said no date has been set for another debate.
The salary increase and full-time designation were two recommendations put forward by the citizen-based council remuneration review committee during council's April 11 standing committee of the whole meeting. It presented its findings after a seven-month study,
Council verbally supported all of the remuneration committee's recommendations, but could not agree on a timeline for implementing the salary bump and full-time designation.
The committee recommended a nearly $12,000 salary increase for councillors to start following the 2025 municipal election; however, councillors Shelley Biermanski, Wes Brodhead, and Sheena Hughes sought an implementation date of this July.
Coun. Natalie Joly also voted against the 2025 implementation date, but her vote stemmed from a desire to have the recommended base salary for a council seat of $70,000 be higher.
During the April 18 council meeting, Joly submitted a notice of motion to have council debate allowing councillors to earn per diems when attending committee and board meetings, as is common in many other municipalities throughout the region. Joly's motion specifies the maximum annual amount a councillor could earn through per diems should be limited to $12,000.
The motion will appear on an upcoming council meeting agenda.
Brodhead said implementing the two recommendations this summer is important because the remuneration review committee's findings could be out of date before they were actually implemented.
“Delaying the implementation of the recommendations for three years just didn't seem to make sense to me, because you're now taking a recommendation based on research three years earlier,” he said. “We definitely don't like to vote on our own pay raises, but in many respects it's one of those situations where you can't avoid the hard decision.”
Brodhead said the increased salary is important to attract a broader range of municipal candidates, as the current salary of $58,587 limits who can serve a term on a council.
Likewise, Coun. Mike Killick said he also thinks the increased salary would allow more members of the community to run for public office. However, he wants the recommendation to be implemented after the next election.
“I was hoping that would be the direction that we would go, and it would not become an issue that we were voting to increase our own salary at a time when everybody else is struggling even to get cost-of-living allowances or any increase in salary,” Killick said.
“I was really hoping that we would have listened to and taken into account that recommendation, but I understand why other councillors may have different viewpoints on that and I'm willing to listen to them.”
For Biermanski, cost-of-living challenges and the seven years since the last time a remuneration review committee was formed is why she wants to implement the salary increase and full-time designation prior to the next election.
“This committee was supposed to be constructed prior to the last election, so they delayed it because of COVID, so everything's sort of behind schedule, and my dilemma with it is we're talking about a pay raise in 2026, and who can tell what's going to happen by 2026?” she said.
“There's a lot of conversation to have yet. I would like to see it ironed out in one total policy.”
Other than the salary increase and full-time designation, council has partially approved other recommendations from the remuneration review committee, including allowing elected officials to access 16 weeks of paternity leave, ending the partial subsidization of phone and internet costs for mayor and council, and lowering the annual cost-of-living adjustment that mayor and council receive from 5.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent.
The lowered cost-of-living adjustment will bring mayor and council in line with the adjustment non-union city employees receive.
The mayor's salary of $149,675 was also recommended to remain the same.
All of the remuneration review committee's recommendations have yet to be formally approved in a regular council meeting.
