Even under the clear, blue skies and the luxurious heat of the first day of summer, the anger and resentment over what public service employees are paid doesn't melt.
With Thursday's report on city council and senior staff pay came the usual rage about how outrageous their incomes are.
City councillors were paid about $31,000 in 2012, before expenses. That's an increase from $23,800 but that 30 per cent pay hike was approved nearly unanimously after a report showed Prince George well behind other municipal councils of similar size across B.C. Future salary increases for mayor and council are now tied to annual public sector increases.
It's unlikely city councillors were working 30 per cent harder or longer in 2012 but, to be fair, being a city councillor is a full-time job. Considering the importance of the decisions they make on behalf of all residents, their pay is hardly adequate but still reasonable.
The councillors were all over the map with expenses and two of them exceeded their budget. Dave Wilbur submitted $7,011 for expenses, followed by Lyn Hall at $6,266. Each councillor was budgeted $6,000 for expenses related to travel, meals and accommodation on behalf of the city. On the low end, Brian Skakun only submitted $1,855 in expenses while Frank Everitt submitted nothing but that comes with an explanation. Everitt didn't submit his expenses until January, when he turned in receipts of more than $5,000 to attend last year's Federation of Canadian Municipalities and Union of B.C. Municipalities conferences. If Everitt submits his statements for this year's conferences before the end of the year and they are the same amount as last year, he'll blow his 2013 expense budget out of the water and add another grey hair or two to the head of corporate services director Kahtleen Soltis.
As the city's chief financial officer, Soltis is well-compensated to deal with late expense claims and other unanticipated costs. She earned $192,579 from the city in 2012 but the last part of the year she had the extra responsibility of being the acting city manager. She is one of 229 city employees that took home more than $75,000 in 2011 but many of these are firefighters who only cleared that bar once their overtime was included. Many of them put in a lot of long hours last April, during the deadly fire at Lakeland Mills.
During those times of crisis, residents love the work done by public sector employees and praise them for their outstanding efforts, perhaps forgetting that firefighters, police officers and other emergency personnel are paid for those extra long days. That's not to demean the work of emergency staff but to simply remember that they are doing a job and they are being paid to do that job.
The mayor is also paid to do a full-time job. She received nearly $93,000 to sit in that chair last year, which seems generous but there was no increase from 2011. It's also less than half what Soltis made and she was behind the city manager's 2012 income of $225,000. The mayor's pay is less than that of the senior city managers, the chief librarian, and the CEOs of Initiatives Prince George and Tourism Prince George.
All of those individuals do not collect overtime and their average working week is far closer to 50 hours (or more) than 40. Once their education and their experience is included with a work week that's 25 per cent or more longer and the responsibility to manage entire departments, it seems the city is getting good value for the work of its senior staff.
While there was some bellyaching about Shari Green submitting more than $20,000 in expenses during 2011, easily eclipsing the expenses Dan Rogers submitted in any of the three years he was mayor (his highest was $17,800 in 2009), it was still nowhere near the $27,725 handed in by Colin Kinsley in 2008, his last year as mayor.
But most importantly, Green came in under budget. About $30,500 was set aside for the mayor's expenses in 2012 and she beat that by more than 10 grand.
That's 10,000 reasons to give the mayor a pat on the back for a job well done.
Now, about those tax increases....
