City councillors will consider giving themselves a $7,000 per year raise in next week's council meeting.
In March council appointed a four-person committee to review the wages and benefits for city councillors and mayor. The committee's final report is coming before city council on Monday.
The report recommends the mayor's salary of $92,787.89 be kept the same in 2012. However, it calls for city councillors' salaries to be increased to a third of the mayor's rate next year.
"The disparity between City of Prince George councillor remuneration and mayor remuneration, relative to peer communities, is striking," committee chairman David Yarmish wrote in his report to council.
"The committee recommends that an adjustment to City of Prince George councillor remuneration to achieve parity with peer communities is warranted."
Currently city councillors receive $23,888.22 per year. If the report's recommendations are approved, that would increase to $30,929.30 in 2012.
In addition, each councillor is budgeted $6,000 for expenses such as travel related to their work on behalf of the city. Approximately $30,500 is budgetted for the mayor's expenses and $19,500 for council committee expenses.
Under the proposal, the mayor and councillors' salaries would increase at the same rate as for the city's union-exempt staff, or the average wage adjustment for public administrators calculated by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. Whichever percentage is lower would be used.
The committee's recommendation was based on an assessment of nine comparable-sized communities in B.C. - Coquitlam, Kelowna, Saanich, Langley, Delta, Kamloops, North Vancouver, Naniamo and Victoria.
Among the nine communities the average mayor's salary in 2010 was $91,972 and average councillor's salary was $35,662. When the Lower Mainland communities were excluded, the average mayor's salary was $87,281 and the average councillor's salary was $30,766.
The report also calls for regular reviews to be conducted of council salaries once per term, by a committee made up of community members.
The report will be considered at city council's regular meeting Monday night. The recommendations would not go into effect until Jan. 1, 2012.
