Pay raises approved for councillors, mayor
Current council votes 9-2 to increase compensation due to changes in tax rate
In a 9-2 recorded vote Monday, city councillors bumped up their wages.
The raises don’t take effect until Jan. 1 after the new council takes over, which means four departing councillors won’t benefit. But returning councillors and four new councillors will see their compensation rise $6,100 to $45,748 and the mayor’s pay will rise $29,387 to $194,280.
The raises largely only account for federal tax changes that get rid of the existing tax-free status on one-third of their council income starting Jan. 1. The changes mean the mayor will still end up taking less home despite the $29,387 raise because of higher taxes paid. For councillors, they’re taking a $4,000 tax hit.
The recommended raises came from a volunteer council compensation committee struck last spring to contemplate council’s first raise since 2005. Because of the tax changes, Dilkens will end up seeing a $7,055 reduction in take-home pay. But his new wage of $194,280 puts him exactly at the median of mayor salaries in comparable Canadian cities. “I think that’s quite fair,” he said Monday night.
There has been an online outcry over the proposed raises. The mayor said it’s uncomfortable for council to tackle the issue of compensation. But he added: “There really is no big increase here. It really is an accounting for the federal tax change.”
Going back to 1991, “the year I graduated high school,” Dilkens said, council voted itself a small increase. There was no increase until 14 years later in 2005, when the council of the day voted for a 1.9 per cent increase. “Now we’re 14 years in the future,” he said, recounting how council decided against increases during the Great Recession around 2008 because it was simply not right. Taking inflation into account, the salaries of council and the mayor have effectively decreased 22 per cent, he said.
There was no debate on the issue and only one member of the public who spoke. David Hanna took issue with the idea of council voting on its own raise. “I’m not dismissing all the work you do,” he said. But the suggestion that being a councillor is a full-time job isn’t true, he said. If council is going to vote for a raise to make up for the tax change, “council has to give us something, too,” he said, suggesting that councillors provide written reports when they travel to conferences.
Voting for the raises were departing councillors John Elliott, Bill Marra, Paul Borrelli and Hilary Payne. Also voting in favour were Ed Sleiman, Chis Holt, Jo-Anne Gignac, Dilkens and Rino Bortolin. Bortolin initially abstained, but when he was told he couldn’t, that it would register as a “no” vote, he voted for the raises. Voting against the raises were Fred Francis and Irek Kusmierczyk. The pay represents an 18 per cent increase for the mayor and a 15 per cent increase for councillors. The median compensation for councillors in comparable Ontario cities was $47,815, $2,067 more than what was approved Monday. Marra said the raise at least allows councillors to retain what they were making before the tax change, though it amounts to a decrease for the mayor. The committee estimated that to make the mayor whole he’d have to be paid $209,892.
“It was the view of the committee that a salary of $209,892 for the position of mayor, which exceeds the average for comparable peer municipalities, could not be recommended,” the committee’s report said. Councillors agreed to, starting in 2020, a system that will see them receive automatic annual increases based on the raises given to non-union city hall staff. They also decided to replace the current compensation system that provides a base salary topped with extra money for sitting on various boards and agencies with an allinclusive salary.
The mayor received a $86,895 base salary in 2017 and received the bulk of his income from sitting on various boards, including $57,206 from various Enwin and Windsor Utility Commission boards, $7,499 for the police commission, $4,141 for the YQG airport board and $9,149 for the city-owned tunnel corporation. Councillors, meanwhile, received a total of $108,770 for sitting on nine different boards, splitting the money evenly for $10,877 each. Based on a survey launched by the committee, the public was split on the issue of council raises. Out of 719 responses, 359 answered: “Yes, everything costs more now and wages need to be commensurate.” However, 360 answered: “No, the compensation is enough, even with the one-third tax loss.” The mayor said he was “very comfortable” with the work done by the committee and approved by council Monday night and believes the raises are “fair and reasonable.”