Mayor should take a 6% salary cut: committee
Calgary’s mayor should take a $12,123 pay cut, starting after this fall’s election, a compensation review committee is recommending.
The five citizen volunteers on the committee say the $212,870 annual salary for mayor should be reduced by six per cent, to $200,747 — still one of the highest in Canada.
After surveying elected officials in Calgary and hiring an external research firm to study council salaries in Edmonton, Mississauga, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg, the committee has brought forward five recommendations, scheduled to go to city council on Monday.
They include keeping the salaries for Calgary city councillors at the current level of $113,416 annually, plus benefits and expenses; reducing the mayor’s pay; and having council vote every year to accept or decline pay hikes or cuts.
Currently, annual salary adjustments for Calgary’s elected officials are automatically made based on Alberta average weekly earnings reports by Statistics Canada — a formula that saw Mayor Naheed Nenshi and the city’s 14 councillors take a 2.49 per cent pay cut on Jan. 1, following several years of automatic increases.
The committee is proposing future adjustments continue to use the weekly earnings indicator that’s already in use, but instead of having the changes automatically happen every Jan. 1, the group wants future councils to vote annually whether to accept or decline the pay hikes or cuts, a proposal Ward 11 Coun. Brian Pincott doesn’t agree with.
“I don’t think we should be making that decision,” he said. “For political purposes, council will always vote to decline (a pay increase) until you reach a situation where they’re so out of whack they have to do a 20 per cent increase just to be competitive again.”
Nenshi wasn’t available to comment on the committee’s recommendations on Wednesday.
When Nenshi first ran for the mayor’s chair in 2010, the job came with $177,100 in annual pay, plus benefits and expenses, while city councillors were paid $97,551 annually.
Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot, who is running for mayor in the October election, said he’s long thought the mayoral position was “overpaid, regardless of who happens to be in the seat.”
“The mayor’s salary was always recognized as being high in Calgary compared to other municipalities. I think it should be brought into alignment, whatever that happens to be,” he said.
The survey of six cities concluded Calgary’s elected officials are the second-highest paid, behind Edmonton, where the fully taxable equivalent for Mayor Don Iveson’s salary is $218,200 and the annual salary is $116,729 for Edmonton city councillors.
In Edmonton, one-third of council salaries are tax-free, and the study found that if Edmonton’s base council salary is adjusted to calculate the tax-free portion, the median salary among the six cities for the mayor’s chair is $175,689 and the median pay is $96,343 for councillors.
The compensation review committee concluded elected officials in Calgary should be paid higher than the median, in order to encourage citizens to seek office.
“It was also agreed in keeping with the development and management of a world-class city like Calgary, municipal elected officials should be fairly compensated for their work,” states the committee’s report.
The volunteer group surveyed nine council members through a confidential online survey that was sent to all 15 members of council in February, and the committee met with one council member in person to solicit feedback.
The committee did not ask the public their thoughts on council salaries because they couldn’t find a “satisfactory method of engaging the public.”
If approved by city council, the recommendations being proposed would take effect after a new council is sworn in following the Oct. 16 municipal elections.