Thank you for your investigations into the pay grades awarded to management level staff in the City of Prince George.The city (and other municipalities) chronically complain to higher level government for more grants and dollars, yet chronically over-pay and over-compensate their staff.I have yet to hear an adequate response for justification.
The common, much heralded answer is they need to attract and retain talent. I roll my eyes.The provincial and federal government compensation levels for equal and greater positions of authority, complexity and responsibility are considerably less. They regularly attract top-level world-class talent while offering less money.
Furthermore, countless HR literature will indicate that pay is not the driver for attracting and retaining talent.This continued old-school argument by elected officials is outdated and false, and is merely used to justify poor decision making.
I would also like to note that you are correct that EMBC compensates municipalities for overtime incurred during emergencies. The fact that office-based excluded management making over $150,000 are entitled to overtime is an interesting question.What is super rich is that provincial excluded managers are entitled to no overtime whatsoever during an emergency event.If they are lucky, they may receive a day or two off.
So EMBC (and all other ministries that have a role in emergency responses) will compensate highly-paid municipal officials but do not need to pay overtime to their own management staff.Provincial management staff (who worked greater hours on more complex emergency files often in other cities far from their homes) were not paid anything additional to their already significantly less salaries.
Compensation needs to be appropriate and I'm not advocating minimum wage for city management.However, what is being paid now, especiallythe sickening (if I may be so bold) overtime given to excluded managers, is truly unbelievable and is justified using a simplistic argument of equality with other municipalities. Prince George taxpayers deserve a more thoroughly modernized justification rooted in compensation literature and proper comparison across duties and jurisdictions, not just because Kamloops and Nanaimo pay these amounts.
If your salaries are indeed a reflection of the quality of talent you have, you can certainly come up with a better rationale.
Let's put those dollars to work.
Tell us why your team deserves these figures.Tell us why we have the best.Give us hard, well-thought-out, data-driven examples why you can't pay people less than their higher-level public sector peers.
The elected officials of the City of Prince George, including challengers who seek election in October, would do well to consider this issue. This is now an election issue for me and I know I will be interested in candidates that can present new methods of thinking on this topic.
K. Morrison
Prince George
