The salaries and workload of council members are under review and many councillors say their government work is difficult to balance with another job.
The review, which will look at the salaries of St. Albert's mayor an council members, is underway for the firs time since 2016, and the committee undertaking the review is seeking public input through an online survey available until Feb. 12.
The last salary change for St. Albert's elected officials came into effect on Jan. 1, 2019 and saw councillor salaries be increased by $5,400, and the mayor's salary be increased by $19,500. Currently, councillors receive a salary of $51,390, while the mayor receives $131,920.
The 2019 increase was put forward to compensate for the loss of a federal tax exemption for municipal councillors that had been in place since 1953. The tax exemption covered one-third of total compensation, meaning that elected officials only paid tax on two-thirds of their income. A remuneration review committee was not formed for the 2019 increase, rather it was a recommendation put forward by the now-defunct Governance, Priorities and Finance Committee, which all of council sat on.
With the review underway, the committee will again look at whether or not a council seat should be considered a full-time position, rather than a part-time position as it's currently designated. Only the mayor is considered full-time.
The committee's survey states that on average city councillors work between 25 to 40 hours each week, "and can be as high as 60 hours during certain periods of time such as budget deliberation or strategic planning."
Coun. Shelley Biermanski, a first-term councillor, told The Gazette that when she was first elected she had every intention of continuing her full-time job as a sales and leasing consultant for Mercedes-Benz, but after going through council's orientation after the 2021 municipal election, she took a leave from her job to make council her full-time priority.
"I realized, 'wow, this is really a lot,'" Biermanski said. "I made the choice to just refer my clients and I had to step away from the full time job."
"I couldn't do both, and I want to do the best possible job I [can] on council."
First elected in 2010, Coun. Wes Brodhead echoed Biermanski's comments, explaining that between 2010 and 2013 he had also held his full-time job as director of bus operations for the Edmonton Transit Service.
"At the end of those three years, if my years of service hadn't come together to allow me to retire from that job and assume full concentration on being a councillor, I wouldn't have been able to do two terms," Brodhead said.
"You know how you are when you're just run ragged and the tank is empty at the end of the day — that's how I was feeling after three years of trying to do that."
Only one sitting councillor currently juggles full-time employment on top of their council duties, Coun. Natalie Joly.
Joly, first elected in 2017, currently serves as the executive director of a non-profit, Elder Care Edmonton, which offers daytime recreational and social programming for seniors. Joly has held the position since last November.
"As an experienced councillor, it's manageable," Joly said, pointing out that during her first term on council she was also a full-time student, completing an MBA through Athabasca University during the 2017-2021 council term.
"I think the challenge of balancing full-time school with council kind of helped me prepare for this balance, but I couldn't have done it those first two years," Joly said.
"The salary, in terms of if you treat it like a full time job, is exclusionary," she said. "It makes the job only accessible to people who have an alternate income source."
Coun. Ken MacKay says the job of a city councillor in St. Albert has become more complex in recent years, and serving on committees and collaborative regional boards requires full-time commitment.
"I'm a little fortunate in the sense that I'm [twice] retired," MacKay said. "I'm maybe not under the same financial constraints that other councillors are and honestly, I believe it's a block."
"I believe it is a block to residents that can't at this point in their life and their family life or their professional life, come into a job that is not paying them a wage they could actually commit to and raise a family on."
Immediately following his election in 2017, MacKay retired as an investigator for the Office of the Child and Youth Advocate Alberta, where he had worked for five years following a 34-year career with the Edmonton Police Service.
According to a report published last November by the Alberta Living Wage Network, which the City of St. Albert is a member of, the annual living expenses for a single parent with one child in St. Albert totals $54,216.
For a family of two parents and two children, the Alberta Living Wage Network found that annual living expenses in St. Albert come out to $81,829.
"We are probably missing out on some incredible knowledge that's in our community that would benefit [St. Albert] if they could actually apply it, but fundamentally, this is not a career," MacKay said.
The council remuneration review committee, comprised of five St. Albertans including former city councillor Ray Watkins, has been meeting since last September, and are expected to present council with findings and recommendations some time this spring.
The seven-question survey was first made available on Jan. 27, and is part of a comprehensive review of council's pay, including benefits, per diems, and other factors. As part of the review process, the committee has already researched similar municipalities and conducted interviews with stakeholders, according to the survey's landing page on the city's Cultivate the Conversation platform.
To complete the remuneration committee's survey, visit: https://conversation.stalbert.ca/council-remuneration.
