Council raises are deserved, but execution was awkward

If a pay increase for Vancouver politicians is justifiable and defensible, which it is (at least to some degree), the raises need not have been arranged in stealth fashion. The municipality’s representatives had fallen behind city councillors in other, similar-sized cities, according to a report by an independent review panel assigned last year to look into the matter.

And so, annual salaries of councillors are to be increased by 12.6 per cent, from $71,061 to $80,029. The mayor’s base pay is to remain at $161,308. Park board commissioner salaries are to be boosted as well.

By comparison, city councillors in Edmonton, with an operating budget nearly twice that of Vancouver, receive $99,994, while politicians in Brampton, with an operating budget half that of this city, are paid $78,713. So the raises appear reasonable.

That said, a host of other raises are to be included in the salary adjustment package — including a $3,000 annual stipend for each councillor and the mayor in lieu of employee benefits, and a transition allowance for when they leave their respective posts.

In a move that will be harder to justify, the councillors intend to make their raises retroactive to January 2015.

Non-Partisan Association Councillor George Affleck, who along with Melissa De Genova and Andrea Reimer voted against the new package, noted, “I knew what the pay was when I took the job.” So did all his fellow councillors.

Taxpayers may also be miffed at the less than transparent way in which the pay rates were adjusted.

An all-party motion to make the change was passed Feb. 24, at the conclusion of an evening council session, and never announced in a media release. Further, in a closed-door workshop, the council gave three of their ilk the task of setting out the new pay rates. (While the independent review panel had documented the relatively low pay for Vancouver’s politicians, it did not recommend new salary numbers.)

Surely, it would have been less awkward to have the city’s chief financial officer or manager complete such a task.

And council should have been more accountable to taxpayers, keeping the public informed of the precise process whereby the pay rates were enhanced.

The full cost of the adjustments, including the retroactive payments, will cost Vancouverites nearly $500,000. But if the councillors felt good about what they were doing, there was no need to have been so cagey about the deed.