Mayor, councillors to get wage reduction

‘We ride ups and downs’

Calgary’s mayor and councillors will see their paycheques shrink slightly in 2017.

Salaries for the mayor and 14 councillors, which currently sit at $218,285 and $116,312.54 respectively, are set to decrease 2.49 per cent Jan. 1.

That means councillors will take a pay cut just under $2,900, while the mayor’s salary will be chopped $5,435.

Salary adjustments for Calgary’s elected officials have been automatic for several years and are based on the same percentage increase or decrease as Alberta average weekly earnings reports by Statistics Canada for the preceding year’s September to September, as recommended by a citizen committee.

A five-member citizen committee is examining if that formula should stay in place when a new council is elected in 2017.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi said council doesn’t have any say over the annual salary increase or decrease, and they shouldn’t.

“The current formula means that I get paid exactly what the average person in Alberta gets … So, if the average person in Alberta’s salary goes up, mine goes up. If it goes down, mine goes down,” Nenshi told Postmedia during a recent year-end interview.

“We ride the ups and we ride the downs, and so I’m happy to ride the downs. I mean I’ve said many times I think I’m actually paid a bit too much, but I don’t muck with the citizen committee’s work, so I donate a big chunk back to charity every year and I’m happy to continue to do that.”

Ward 1 Coun. Ward Sutherland said the pay cut reflects the economic reality in Alberta.

“I find it amusing people say, ‘You took a pay cut because it’s election time.’ It has nothing to do with that. It’s based on average earnings,” said Sutherland, the vice-chair of the city’s finance committee.

Ward 12 Coun. Shane Keating said this is the first year, in his six years on council, that his salary has decreased, though council members opted to forgo an automatic pay hike and freeze their own salaries in 2014.

Keating said using the average earnings reports to calculate automatic annual salary hikes or cuts makes sense. “We accept when it’s a decrease, the same as when it’s an increase. This matches exactly what happens within Alberta’s weekly wages,” he said.

This year’s wage cut comes after several years of increases — councillor salaries jumped 19 per cent, from $97,551 in 2010 to $116,312 in 2016. Over the same time period, the mayor’s salary climbed 23 per cent from $177,100 to $218,285.

City hall’s five general managers earn base salaries between $190,500 and $321,500, while the city’s directors earn from $131,500 to $240,000, according to the city’s 2016 salary disclosure list.