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RD pays top staff much less than city

Croatia qualified for the World Cup final this weekend, defeating England 2-1 Wednesday.
godbout

Croatia qualified for the World Cup final this weekend, defeating England 2-1 Wednesday.

Croatia is roughly the same size as the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George, which extends north to Mackenzie and southeast to Valemount and the Alberta border.

There are about four million people in Croatia, which can be found east across the Adriatic Sea from Italy. There are only about 100,000 people in Fraser-Fort George, with more than three-quarters of them found in Prince George and the immediate area.

The regional district provides local government to rural residents who live outside of Prince George, Valemount, McBride and Mackenzie and partners with those municipalities on various necessities, such as the Foothills Boulevard landfill site in Prince George.

Like the municipalities, regional districts across B.C. require staff to deliver government services and managers to direct them.

The regional district's top bureaucrat, chief administrative officer Jim Martin, working out of the RDFFG headquarters at the corner of First Avenue and George Street, was paid $177,200 in remuneration (wages plus taxable benefits) in 2017 and $173,904 in 2016. Prince George's city manager, Kathleen Soltis, working at city hall at the other end of George Street, made $284,480.31 in 2017 and $239,983.88 in 2016.

Eight other City of Prince George employees - the entire management team directly under Soltis - all made more in 2017 than Martin did.

Both Martin and Soltis are longtime employees of their respective government organizations. Martin rose to his current role in 2007 while Soltis was appointed to the lead job in 2015.

Across the board, the regional district pays its top people significantly less than the City of Prince George to do similar roles. The budgets and the staff are much larger at the city, of course, but geographically, Prince George makes up just 0.6 per cent of the regional district.

The regional district's general manager of financial services was paid $123,876 in 2017 and $118,850 in 2016. The city's finance director was paid $183,961 in 2017 and $167,292 in 2016.

The regional district's general manager of legislative and corporate services was paid $103,144 in 2017 and $99,441 in 2016 while the equivalent position in Prince George made $207,620 and $189,957 during the same two years.

The regional district's general manager of community services was paid $127,090 last year and $121,891 in 2016, compared to $212,661 and $189,243 during the same two years.

The regional district's manager of human resources was paid $95,644 in 2017 and $93,613 the year before that while the corresponding job at city hall in Prince George was paid $198,453 and $176,382 over the last two years.

The regional district's manager of external relations was paid $95,536 in 2017 and $91,971 in 2016. The City of Prince George paid the comparable position $199,911 in 2017 and $177,124 in 2016.

The Regional District of Fraser-Fort George doesn't just give good value in bureaucrat wages compared to the City of Prince George but compared to similar regional districts in B.C.

The Regional District of Nanaimo paid its chief administrative officer $226,931.30 in 2017 while its five senior managers and directors were paid between $131,000 and $164,000.

The Regional District of North Okanagan paid its chief administrative officer $192,828.07 in 2017, while its four general managers received between $130,000 and $140,000 each.

The Regional District of Thompson-Nicola, which covers Kamloops and the surrounding area, paid its chief administrative officer $205,959 in 2017 while its three top directors took in between $135,000 and $146,000.

Thompson-Nicola led their local government response to accommodate the Cariboo wildfire evacuees last summer. In its Statements of Financial Information, the regional district was good enough - unlike the City of Prince George - to break out the overtime paid to senior staff through the Provincial Emergency Program.

And that overtime pay was huge.

The chief administrative officer took in $117,522 in emergency remuneration, on top of the $205,959 he got to do his day job. The human resources director was paid $55,486 for wildfire work (on top of $135,836) and the emergency services supervisor was paid $54,843 (on top of $94,786).

The regional district did not provide the number of overtime hours these three individuals worked during the wildfires. Some ballpark math, however, would suggest that the chief administrative officer, whose regular pay would be in the range of $100 per hour on a 40-hour work week, would have put in more than 1,000 overtime hours at straight time or more than 500 overtime hours at double time.

The Citizen has a Freedom of Information request filed with the City of Prince George to release the overtime earnings and hours worked by senior management during the wildfire evacuee crisis. Yet based on the increases in their remuneration between 2016 and 2017, the top people at Prince George city hall didn't bill nearly as much in overtime to the province as their colleagues in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District did.

That still doesn't excuse the substantial wage discrepancy at the leadership level between the City of Prince George and the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George.

Nor does it excuse the dramatic double-digit increases in earnings seen by the city's management team between 2014 and 2017.

-- Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout