Cambridge will pay dearly for salary hike for mayor and councillors

Are you for real, Cambridge councillors?

You’re considering raising your own salaries by 36 per cent in one year?

It sounds like political suicide, but it’s likely to happen. Last April, councillors voted for a salary boost to take effect in January. It’s supposed to make up for losing tax-exempt status on part of their salaries.

There’s more. On Tuesday, councillors will vote again on another increase for themselves — this time as a combination cost-of-living increase and to make their pay more equal to their counterparts in Waterloo.

Step by step, it’s all very reasonable. But when you look at the big picture, we’re talking about increasing a salary that is now $30,120 to $41,000.

A 36 per cent raise.

The election being safely over, the councillors can vote for this outrageous plan without fear of being removed from their positions by an angry electorate. The voters have four years to forget about it all.

It’s the same audacious story with the mayor’s job.

The current salary for the mayor of Cambridge is $74,260, not including the additional pay to recognize his or her work on Waterloo regional council.

Tuesday’s proposed wage hike would mean the same mayor would earn $101,000 next year, another 36 per cent raise.

Why didn’t they all raise their salaries by a little bit each year instead of in one flamboyant sweep?

The argument that they need to be paid equally with Kitchener and Waterloo is reasonable, in theory.

In fact, there is a good case to be made that the job of mayor of Cambridge should be paid better than the other two, since the debates are more raucous, and the City of Cambridge is more difficult to govern because it is comprised of several very different communities.

Only the mayor of Cambridge, to my knowledge, has been sent an envelope of feces by an angry observer after a difficult discussion on a proposed sportsplex for the city.

Shouldn’t there be some danger pay involved?

Joking aside, it’s true that Cambridge municipal politicians haven’t had a cost-of-living increase in a long time. It’s also true that the hike in pay compensates for losses of some other perks, like home internet costs, benefits and disability coverage.

But do you think Premier Doug Ford cares about these details? This is politics. Optics matter. And just like Mike Harris, a Progressive Conservative premier of two decades ago, Ford’s brand is focused on cost savings and being the guy who cleans up bureaucratic sprawl.

This move gives him plenty of justification to announce that we have too many municipal politicians in Waterloo Region (there are 59, not including school board trustees) and they are costing people too much money.

All of which brings us closer to amalgamation, in which the region’s city and township governments would vanish and be replaced by one big city with maybe one-quarter of the elected representatives we have now.

Cambridge council, are you sure?