Swift Current council talks about renumeration…
Swift Current’s new council wants to send a clear message to residents with their decision on their own remuneration.
They voted unanimously in support of a motion at a regular council meeting on Dec. 14 that will result in a greater cost saving on their remuneration than previously planned.
Mayor Al Bridal felt there are several reasons why this change in remuneration makes sense for the new council.
“We want to show citizens that we're serious about controlling our taxation rate and our spending rate, but we also want to show administration that we're serious about doing it ourselves,” he said during an online media briefing after the council meeting.
He added that the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a negative impact on many individuals and businesses in the community.
“Lots of people lost their livelihood or had it severely cut, and we wanted to show as council that we know people have lost their jobs, we know they've lost revenue in their businesses,” he said. “Musicians, artists, many of these people this last year particularly have taken a lot less money and when we look to the future, lots of us don't know how the future is going to look and people are scared. And so as a council we wanted to say we recognize this and we want to make sure that we show with our leadership that we think it's important that we take a little bit less, not just keeping it the same.”
He acknowledged that the saving on council remuneration will not make much of a dent on the overall City budget, but it is still an important message to send to residents.
“I mean, on a $63 million budget, what's $30,000 or $35,000?” he said. “But you know what, it's still $30,000 or $35,000 that doesn't have to be spent and we wanted to make that statement.”
The policy change was introduced at the previous council meeting in November. That change would have kept their remuneration consistent with the income of council members during the previous term of office and made it more efficient to administer.
The cost saving will be achieved through the elimination of all claims by council members for meetings and per diems. The mayor’s salary will remain unchanged at 42 per cent of step one of the chief administrative officer’s salary.
At the previous meeting the proposal was to increase councillor’s remuneration from 35 per cent to 42 per cent of the mayor’s salary, to make up for the loss of income from claims for meetings and per diems. Councillor Tom Christiansen felt there was room for a bigger change, and council members discussed his proposal at their planning session on Dec. 9.
This resulted in an additional change presented at the Dec. 14 council meeting, which will only result in an increase in councillor’s remuneration from 35 per cent to 38 per cent of the mayor’s salary.
“I had actually introduced that for the last meeting and my intention was to give
myself a haircut, but I didn't want to give much to the councillors themselves,” Bridal said about his original intention. “I thought if they were going to, they could, and so we had a planning meeting last week. … Councillor Christiansen was the one that had mentioned something in our last council meeting. He sort of led the charge and we finally settled on that percentage.”
The current salary for councillors is $28,800. It would have increased to approximately $34,000 if the original change was implemented, but the latest change will mean their salary will increase to just over $31,000. The mayor’s salary will remain at about $81,000 per year, but in previous years the mayor’s renumeration was closer to $90,000 as a result of claims for meetings and diems, which will not be allowed under the new policy.
The renumeration for the entire council will be approximately 10 per cent less as a result of this latest change. The motion at the Dec. 14 council meeting authorized administration to proceed with advertising a public notice of motion for a two-week period. Council members will formally vote on the change to their remuneration at the next regular council meeting on Jan. 11, 2021.
Only two councillors from the previous term were re-elected in the recent municipal election. Councillors Pat Friesen and Ryan Plewis both supported this policy change.
“The effect of this is basically that I'm taking a 10 per cent pay cut in being a City councillor given really to the fact that we will have no per diems or meeting fees that we claim for individual meetings,” Councillor Plewis said during the meeting. “If you apply this formula to what other members of council in the last term would have taken home, it's closer to 16 per cent pay reduction. So really I think it's fair to say to the public that council has decided looking inwards that we're going to take a pay cut over the next four years of between 10 and 16 per cent of what the last council made.”
For the newly elected council members this will technically not be a reduction in remuneration, but they will still help to set the tone for the new term.
“As I've never served on council before, this doesn't really feel like a pay cut to me,” Councillor Ryan Switzer noted. “So I just like to take this opportunity to thank councillors Plewis and Friesen for stepping up here.”