12.7% pay increase eyed for city councillors

City councillors should give themselves a 12.3 per cent pay raise and give the mayor a 17.4 per cent raise to make up for the recent loss of a tax break, a new city staff report recommends.

If council approves the plan Monday, the mayor’s pay would go from $70,696 in 2019 to $83,334 (an increase of $12,365).

Meanwhile each councillor’s pay would go from $29,059 to $32,644 (an increase of $3,585).

Councillors are expected to debate the idea of a raise during budget talks at City Hall on Monday.

Prior to Jan. 1, city councillors and mayors received a third of their pay free of income tax (to make up for any expenses public officials incur to do their jobs).

But not anymore: starting Jan. 1, the federal government has removed the tax break.

To compensate for that loss, the staff report states, council must keep track of expenses for reimbursement or get paid more.

Last year council voted to keep track of expenses while adding money to a fund meant to reimburse them.

They voted to add $10,000 to a $15,000 fund for reimbursement of expenses; that brought the fund to $25,000 (or $2,500 for each councillor).

But the new staff report states that it’s “much less efficient” to track personal expenses such as mileage, for instance, than to simply increase council’s pay.

If council gives itself this raise, it will cost $31,491 in 2019.

To cover the cost, the staff report recommends taking the $10,000 from the reimbursement fund and then taking the rest — $21,491 — from the city’s general contingency fund.

Councillors may also consider a new group benefit plan on Monday. The annual cost for a council member (single) is $2,200, and $5,600 (if the councillor wants family coverage).

Depending on the mix of family and single coverage, the staff report states, it could cost between $24,600 and $61,400 annually to offer benefits to council.

Meanwhile the staff report points out that the pay for council in Peterborough still lags behind that in other, similar-sized municipalities in Ontario — even with the proposed raise.

A citizens’ committee had reviewed council’s pay in 2016, and in early 2017 proposed no pay raise; the rationale was that there’s an element of community service to council work, and the pay shouldn’t be a particular incentive to run for office.

Still, the new report points out that staff compared the council pay in Peterborough in 2016 to other similar-sized municipalities in Ontario (such as Timmins and Kingston) and found that Peterborough pays below average.

The average pay for a mayor in those comparator cities was about $79,000 at the time, for instance; the mayor in Peterborough was earning $67,000.

For councillors the average annual pay was $28,900, whereas in Peterborough it was $27,720.

But the staff report states that it makes recommendations only to make councillors “financially whole” following the lost tax break.

“It is not an attempt to address the question of compensation,” the report states.

The next councillor compensation reviews are expected to take place in 2020, the report states.