The financial compensation for the role of mayor is sufficient, but pay for councillors is lagging, according to the group responsible for reviewing council remuneration.
This year, councillors are bringing home $31,394 which ranks ninth out of 10 comparator communities the five-person advisory committee looked at while considering changes to the council compensation package.
The last time a review was completed, council pay was adjusted to that of one-third the mayor's salary, which put Prince George councillors near the average among comparators.
"In the ensuing three years, further adjustments to remuneration in comparator municipalities has resulted in lost ground of Prince George councillors," said the advisory committee report to be presented to council tonight.
A city bylaw legislates that council remuneration be looked at once every three years, in the final year of a council's term. The committee is comprised of Jim Blake, Jennifer Brandle-McCall, Alain LeFebvre, Adele Schlick and Trevor Williams.
The committee looked at remuneration in Coquitlam, Delta, Langley, North Vancouver, Nanaimo, Saanich, Victoria, Kelowna and Kamloops as part of the review and found councillors are compensated at an average of 39 per cent of the mayors' salary.
The 2014 rate for the Prince George mayor is $94,182, which ranks No. 6 out of 10 comparator communities.
"Recognizing that the predominant motivation to serve on council is the desire to provide public service, the committee determined that a principled approach to remuneration ought to be providing some standardization among comparator municipalities," said the report. That standard should eventually be having councillors paid 40 per cent of what the mayor makes, the committee recommends.
A phased-in approach is suggested, with no changes in 2015, but increasing pay to 35 per cent of the mayor's salary in 2016, to 37.5 per cent in 2017 and reaching 40 per cent in 2018.
Councillor and mayor pay is also adjusted annually to the lessor of the annual increase to non-unionized city staff or average annual wage settlement for the Canadian public administration industry.
