Given the complaints I’ve seen about St. Albert City Council’s pay increase, there are a few things worth remembering.
For one thing, council’s salary is justified by the fact that the job is ‘part-time’. Maybe it used to be, but it’s now a full-time one. Council agenda packages can run into the hundreds of pages, requiring a lot of time to go through them thoroughly. Councillors may also need to do additional research for questions they want to ask the city’s administration, to act on public feedback or to implement their campaign promises. That work can take a long time if you want to do it right. They also have to participate on multiple committees, like the Committee of the Whole that examines issues more deeply than regular council meetings have time for. If you look at the city’s YouTube page or website, you’ll see that some of these meetings can last a good four hours or more.
Councillors are often expected to respond to the public’s concerns. Mayor Cathy Heron, Councillor Wes Brodhead and former Mayor Nolan Crouse have all been kind enough to make time to meet me one-on-one about my concerns. Many members of council have also made time to answer my phone calls and e-mails. How many times have they had to do that for other St. Albertans who’ve had issues they want to raise?
Councillors are also often expected to attend community events like hospital fundraisers. They’re technically still “on the clock” when they do that, since they’re representing the city. Other people they run into can and do take the chance to raise other issues with them, and councillors will have to follow up on them.
Given the time commitments and structure, where councillors can be on the clock both in the middle of the day and late in the evening, can you honestly call it a part-time job?
Council’s current pay structure sharply limits how many people can run for it. If you look at the type of people who’ve run for council in recent elections, you’ll find a lot of retirees, self-employed business people and recent graduates, the kinds of people who have the ability to set their own schedules and/or have other sources of income to complement their council salaries. Some recent councillors have said they probably couldn’t make ends meet if they didn’t have their spouse’s income to back them up. Others decided not to run again because the time commitments were far more than they intended. Treating council as a full-time job would make council more accessible for more people.
If you insist on sticking with a part-time salary, are you willing to accept a part-time effort from councillors? Can you accept them not getting back to you right away? Can you accept them not attending your public event? Can you accept them not thoroughly reading council packages?
In short, you need to choose between councillors putting in a full-time effort or being paid a part-time salary.
You can’t have both.
