Councillors split on pay increase

St. Albert council will wait until later this fall to make a decision on council member remuneration.

Council unanimously accepted the council remuneration review committee’s final report at the Sept. 9 meeting and disbanded the committee. The report, along with city staff’s recommendations, will come back before council Nov. 21.

Committee chair Larry Kirkpatrick gave a brief presentation to council, explaining the five citizen volunteers on the committee had put in nearly 300 hours of work on the report, which represents their opinion on the best way to compensate councillors.

Prominent among the 27 recommendations are an increase to the mayor and councillor base salaries while eliminating per-diem payments for all-day meetings, which he said would create a “level playing field” among councillors.

“In doing so, we recognize that something is being given up, so to make it more level, add that into the basic compensation,” he said.

The report notes St. Albert councillor salary in 2015 was $36,460 for part-time work, but when total compensation including salary, per diems, benefits and allowances was factored in, that figure ranged from a low of $42,278 to a high of $47,017.

In the same year the mayor’s base salary was $104,171 for full-time work, with a total compensation of $121,362 – not including the additional $24,000 he received for his role as chair of the Capital Region Board.

The report recommends increasing the council base salary to $50,000, which Kirkpatrick said is in the 60th percentile of comparable cities in the province, and increasing the mayor’s base salary to $125,000, which is in the 90th percentile of comparable cities in the province.

While several councillors attempted to grill Kirkpatrick about recommendations they didn’t specifically agree with, he was clear the report simply represents the opinion of the committee.

“We’ve given you our recommendations, we’ve given you our best advice, and you can do whatever you like with it, quite frankly,” he said.

It appears council members are split on what to do with the advice. Mayor Nolan Crouse and councillors Wes Brodhead, Cathy Heron and Tim Osborne said in interviews they would support the recommended increase, while councillors Sheena Hughes, Cam MacKay and Bob Russell said they were opposed.

Crouse said he’s ambivalent about the compensation from his own perspective, since he got into politics to serve his community rather than collect a paycheque, but said he felt $125,000 for a chief officer of an organization as large as the city wasn’t unreasonable.

“I’m not ambivalent for the need for us to pay fairly, so you can attract a quality candidate into the mayor’s chair,” he said.

Brodhead said all things considered he feels $50,000 isn’t an unreasonable amount to pay councillors, especially once the changes take effect for the next council, but knows some in the city will disagree.

“I think it’s reasonable. There will be some that think it’s a bit rich, and some that think it’s a bit light in our community,” he said.

Heron said she believed increasing compensation for councillors is essential to be able to attract people to run. She said at the current salary it would be difficult to take care of a family and the hours make it difficult to hold a full-time job.

She said she would prefer to see the per-diem payments kept in place to compensate for the disproportionate amount of additional work some councillors do.

“There is a very big difference in the amount of committee work this current council’s taking,” she said. “There’s various reasons for that. Some of them just don’t have the time and some of them believe council’s just about Monday nights.”

Osborne said from his point of view, the reason council sought an outside perspective is because it would be inappropriate for councillors to reject the recommendations without a “compelling reason.”

“From my perspective, I think we should be respecting the advice given to us by the committee,” he said. ‘I’m comfortable with the recommendations they’ve made.”

Hughes said she believes the increase isn’t justifiable at all, considering the amount of work councillors put in.

“I was prepared to have the committee recommend a much more modest increase, but with that level of jump, I felt more than a little uncomfortable,” she said.

She also said she felt getting rid of the per-diem payments was a good idea, because she feels some councillors take advantage of the per-diem payments by seeking as much committee work as possible.

“The thing I find frustrating is when councils are on the CRB or volunteer for a lot of committees then complain about how much work they have to do on those committees,” Hughes said.

MacKay said from his point of view, there’s nothing complex enough about governing a community like St. Albert that would justify the proposed increases.

“I recognize we all work hard and try our best, but when you look at the comparables, the numbers we were presented with don’t gel with what others are getting,” he said.

Russell echoed those sentiments, noting St. Albert doesn’t have complex governance issues when compared to places like Fort Saskatchewan or Strathcona County – and if it was part of Edmonton, the city would only have one or possibly two full-time councillors.

“For a city this size, really if you take out the box stores it’s just your average stop along the trail,” he said.

He said council work is a part-time job, and shouldn’t take any more than 25 hours per week if time is properly managed.

Although the current council will ultimately make the decision on changes to council compensation, it will be the next council that is most affected by the changes.

For the most part councillors said they had not yet made the decision on whether to run again for council, and Crouse said he’s “50/50” about whether to put his name forward again.

Heron confirmed she did intend to seek re-election, since she believes there’s lots of work left to do, but would neither confirm nor deny that she intends to seek the mayor’s chair.

Russell, who is 85, said he would like to run for council again as long as his health permits.