Most people call it pay.
At city hall, however, call it remuneration.
Folks in the public sector love their "three-dollar words," as former city council Glen "Moose" Scott once eloquently put it.
The current city council, through its finance and audit committee, began its regular three-year review into remuneration levels for mayor and councillors.
In other words, they're considering giving themselves a raise.
The finance and audit committee is suggesting a five-person panel to look at mayor and council pay. They are also wisely suggesting that instead of hand-picking the group's members, like they did in 2011, that they choose from the applications from residents of the community, just like they do for all of the other city advisory committees. City council would still hand-pick from this group, but at least they would have to choose from a body of interested residents.
If city council approves this process and the committee is formed, the members of it will have until June 30 to look at the rates in other comparable B.C. municipalities and then deciding if mayor and/or councillors deserved a raise and, if so, how much. Their recommendations about not just salary but other compensation (per diems, expenses, benefits and allowances) are non-binding on mayor and council.
If this committee were to look at the current situation, here is what it would find:
- The mayor's annual salary is $92,787.89. That rate is the same as it was in 2012.
- The annual pay for city councillors is $30,929.30, a 30 per cent increase approved after the 2012 remuneration review.
- A 2013 report commissioned by the City of Kamloops found that the going rate for a mayor of mid-to-large B.C. cities ranges from the low 80s (Nanaimo, Kelowna) to $123,696.30 for the mayor of Coquitlam. In other words, Prince George pays its mayor on the low side of the provincial average but not as low as Nanaimo or Kelowna.
- That same report found that even with the 30 per cent pay hike in 2012, Prince George city councillors are at the bottom, making less than their Kelowna and Nanaimo counterparts. Meanwhile, city councillors in Coquitlam take home $53,835.60 per year or 74 per cent more than the eight gentlemen currently sitting in the seats of responsibility in the council chambers at Prince George city hall.
The problem is there is no right answer or right amount. City councillors are paid just under $31,000 a year for what looks like a part-time job but is actually a full-time job and then some. The mayor is well compensated but that job, like any senior political role, is not eight hours a day, five days a week. Regardless of who sits in the mayor's chair, a day doesn't go by when they aren't either working as the mayor or thinking about things they have to do when they get back to the office. The job is never done, at least until the voters say so but that's a different matter.
Yet it's not as difficult a choice as it sounds, either. Whoever is chosen to sit on this committee and make remuneration recommendations (there's a mouthful!) can frame their decision by simply asking how much they would want to be paid if they had to do the job.
The choice is also simpler than it looks because it's an abstract decision, not only for the committee members but even for mayor and council, who will have to approve or reject the recommendations. That's because the pay rates won't take effect until Jan. 1, 2015, more than six weeks after the results of this fall's municipal election. In other words, the increases (or not) are not tied to the nine specific individuals on city council but to the public offices they hold, since the current occupants of those offices may not be re-elected this fall.
With all of that in mind, the final choice the committee makes should be about fairly compensating the people who will form the next city council for the hard work and difficult decisions they will have to make during their time in office. Best of all, they have some guiding numbers to use.
The city agreed with its two unions to increases of 0.75 per cent in 2014 and two per cent in both 2015 and 2016. Keep it simple and stick with that for the next term's mayor and council.
