Questions raised over increased salary costs
Salary costs at the County of Colchester are rising by more than $300,000 per year, which has at least one councillor questioning the math.
“The increase of all our salaries over last year is fairly significant,” Deputy Mayor Bill Masters said, during recent budget discussions. “Somebody should add it all up and maybe just recheck the math.”
The budgeted figure for this year’s municipal employees is $6,038,118, compared to salary amounts totalling $5,736,254 for the 2016/17 fiscal year. That is a difference of $301,864. The overall salary increase for the previous year was even greater, however, when costs rose by $366,526, to $5,736,254 from $5,369,728. The municipality currently has 112 fulltime employees plus approximately 15 casual workers during seasonal periods.
Scott Fraser, director of corporate services, said this year’s remuneration figures do include increases associated with a number of staff allocations as well as the addition of six new employees.
Five of those new employees were hired for the materials recycling facility after the municipality expanded its collection of recycled materials to include Styrofoam, textiles, as well as taking on the processing of materials from East Hants.
The added cost for those positions in the first year was $189,488. But Fraser said those costs are offset by increased tipping fee and sales revenues.
The labour contract with Colchester’s unionized employees is set to expire in June. But even without factoring in any potential increase stemming from those negotiations, Masters expressed concern with the increased figures.
“Total salaries overall, whether union or non union, in this budget show an increase of way more than I expect our negotiations would go,” Masters said. “And at some point somebody should add all the salaries up. And I know that there are a lot of reallocations in there but if you take a thousand dollars and put it over here in four places, it’s still a thousand dollars.”