CITIZEN ADVISERS DISSED
The current economic struggles in Calgary are well-known. Many people have lost jobs and their businesses are suffering. The committee thought now is the time for a correction in compensation for our elected municipal employees. Peter Bowal Serving on cou
Members of Calgary’s city council recently decided on their own pay and benefits for the next four years. Among the highest paid of elected municipal officials across Canada, the current councillors proved they will continue to vote their own interests. In the ultimate stroke of hypocrisy, they criticized — as biased — the citizen advisers they appointed to study their compensation and make recommendations.
Last October council appointed five citizen experts to the Council Compensation Review Committee. I can say, as a former chair of this committee, we did not receive a penny for this service.
All ordinary citizens, we went to 12 meetings and submitted to the mind-numbing, picayune rules of city committees. We were expected to drive to City Hall to attend meetings we knew would be postponed. I received a $120 speeding ticket because com- mittee meetings only grant five minutes of grace to volunteer citizen members. I paid out of my own pocket for a freedom of information inquiry to obtain city information. We took time off work. One member quit due to the demands and was replaced.
We were not the Olympic recommendation committee which gets to spend $5 million on a ‘yes or no’ issue. We are not the retired judge appointed with $500,000 to advise Calgary Police how to reduce deaths by officers.
Those committees are not only well-funded but are free from the vice grips of city administration. The compensation committee drew the short straw.
Our committee worked hard, dedicating hundreds of hours of time and energy to this project over seven months.
We were all engaged and kept costs to a minimum.
Calgary and Edmonton pay their elected officials virtually the same. This is the highest in Canada. Calgary pays more cash but Edmonton pays one-third of salary tax-free. As taxes go up, Edmonton has a slight edge but it is really just a rounding error.
The current economic struggles in Calgary are well-known. Many people have lost jobs and their businesses are suffering. The committee thought now is the time for a correction in compen- sation for our elected municipal employees. Instead of being the highest paid, we preferred if they would be closer to the 75th percentile. The spread between mayor and councillor should be narrowed. I voted for a salary freeze for the next four years for all 15 council members to get to that correction. The committee went with the average weekly earnings index, applied annually.
We did not see the rationale for continuing to pay the transition allowance to mayor and councillors who quit or are defeated.
There is no parallel for these parting gifts anywhere else outside of Canadian politics. There are political realities to campaigns and limited terms but candidates voluntarily choose them much in the same way people step out of careers and jobs to start a business or a family. Reintegration can be a challenge. Some allowances are also disappearing.
Alberta provincial politicians lost them in 2012. The City does not pay transition allowances to any of its own fixed-term employees or contractors when their terms are finished.
Calgary’s elected officials arguably enjoy the best municipal overall employment benefits package in the country.
The pension, for example, is very rich, and most of the contributions are paid by taxpayers. After only one term of four years, a councillor can draw a pension of $766 per month at age 60.
For perhaps the first time in the history of citizen compensation recommendations in Calgary, we advised an across-the-board cut to total compensation. We recommended dropping the transition allowance effective October, although accrued credit would be paid out. Overall, it was a small cut of $4,362 per year from the councillors’ current entitlements. We thought, in addition to jettisoning the anachronistic transition allowance, the sharing of municipal politicians in the city’s economic reality was important and timely symbolism.
Our committee attended the council meeting where these recommendations were debated and voted on. We were told to be seated at 9:30 a.m., but our item was put near the end of the agenda. The earlier items of business mostly involved city employees speaking to council. It struck me as uncongenial that the volunteers who had taken the day off work to present to council were made to wait until the end of the day to be called.
Councillors wandered in and out of the meeting, and the agenda gave way to at least three elementary school classes being introduced and applauded for their 10-minute stay.
We waited through all the issues and votes on politician-centric issues such as when candidates can put up their temporary election signs, and how they can raise funds for their campaigns. They were vexed about how to address the deputy mayor who was chairing the meeting. Coun. Demong took at least 10 minutes to read a long poem written by a schoolgirl. Ironically, he would soon label our report “a little bit odd.” Coun. Farrell went on about the fate of hopscotch in Calgary, even after she was ruled out of order.
This was the first council meeting I have attended in 27 years and I was soon pondering whether council actually deals with anything of significance to ordinary Calgarians.
After a few hours of this, the compensation matter was called. First Coun. Stevenson complained that he was too old to get the pension benefit. He asked about the continuation of his benefits. That could have been a private call to HR. He pointed out that Calgary councillors have more constituents in their wards. Yes, but Toronto and Ottawa also have far larger annual budgets and Calgary has far more full-time employees per capita than other Canadian municipalities.
Next up was Coun. Carra who asked the committee to extemporaneously provide the detail of all the thoughts, ideas, options and positions that went into the report. He wanted to know everything the committee contemplated. Apparently not hearing the answer he sought, he denounced the report. He said it did not consider the “ridiculous” hours and effort he spent getting elected. The committee did fail to connect election campaigns with transition allowances. Coun. Carra had said that every time they voted on their pay, it was a “race to the bottom” but this is not true.
Calgary council has not reached the top of the compensation ladder over the years by voting themselves pay cuts.
The debate deteriorated from there. They charged the committee with bias. They picked their way through the recommendations and voted to keep the transition allowance.
A thoughtful and balanced compensation review report was quickly discarded because taxpaying citizens cannot understand how hard councillors work.
I do not understand why anyone would accept council’s appointment in future years to serve on this committee.
It is a thankless project.
They criticized — as biased — the citizen advisers they appointed to study their compensation ...