Councillors in two British Columbia cities voted this month to increase their base salaries as the majority argued municipal governance is a full-time job and increased remuneration is needed to meet demands and attract diverse candidates to city halls.
Successful votes for a 25 per cent pay increase for councillors in Victoria and a 30 per cent increase for those in Kelowna were not unanimous, however, and show the challenges elected officials face in setting their own pay.
“This is not an easy position,” said Kelowna Mayor Tom Dyas as he and his eight councillors debated a staff recommendation to increase his base salary to $145,200 from $126,497.29 and councillors’ pay from $42,991.14 to $58,080.
Council voted 5–3 in favour of a pay bump that a staff report said would bring Kelowna in line with similar cities.
Previous funding formulas for base pay for Kelowna’s mayor and councillors had been in place since 2014, said the report. It also said their compensation was well below the median pay in other B.C. cities.
In supporting the vote, Dyas said pay for elected officials needed to reflect the amount of work being done and be enough to attract talented people to city hall.
“If we want the best individuals in these chairs in the future beyond the time we are in here, it’s something that we need to do so at least we are at par with regards to the communities throughout the province,” said Dyas.
The Kelowna staff report on the pay increase was based on a third-party study commissioned by Victoria’s council, which compared remuneration between 11 B.C. cities and seven cities in other parts of Canada.
Earlier this month, as Victoria’s council received the report for information, first-time councillors Jeremy Caradonna and Matt Dell tabled a motion to formally recognize council work as a full-time job and increase pay to 50 per cent of what Victoria’s mayor makes.
It passed five votes to three.
Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto currently earns $131,050, which means councillors stand to earn $65,525 — up from $52,420 — as early as May 1.
“This is a full-time job,” said Caradonna in addressing his motion. “At least for anyone who wants to do the job well.”
‘Added complexity’
The last formal remuneration review in Victoria was in 2008. Councillors argued that since that time the city has grown significantly and was facing increasingly difficult problems such as homelessness, street crime and mental health and addictions.
Stephen Fleming, Kelowna’s long-serving city clerk, told councillors on Monday that in his 28 years on the job, the work of council had become more involved.
“There’s certainly added complexity to the work that you do,” he said. “Also the legislative and legal framework in which you work is much more complex than it was when I started in local government.”
Dissenting councillors in both cities recognized the importance of paying the mayor and councillors appropriately, but bristled at being the ones to approve increases.
Victoria Coun. Marg Gardiner, who was elected in November 2022, said she figured she worked about 25 hours per week over 45 weeks when council was engaged.
She argued that remuneration could not be a issue in attracting candidates when 37 people ran for eight seats in the last election.
Gardiner argued taxpayers would not appreciate the pay raise considering property taxes are expected to rise by more than eight per cent this year without accounting for the pay increase.
“I bet most of them aren’t going to be getting a raise in income as being proposed here,” she said.
Staff in Kelowna said that the total cost of the pay raise would be $139,413.60 and would be funded from financial savings identified in other areas of its budget.
Coun. Mohini Singh, one of three Kelowna councillors who voted against the pay raise, said it was too much, too quickly.
“I’m not opposed to a pay raise,” Singh said. “I just think in one clear swoop to increase it by [30 per cent] is a bit much … maybe we could have broken it up, maybe we could have taken a different path.”
In December Kelowna’s council approved a draft budget that would raise property taxes by 4.75 per cent.