Town of Athabasca council is set to receive an approximately 30-per-cent raise, and not all councillors are happy about it.
The motion was made by councillor Tim Verhaeghe and passed by a 4--3 vote at last Tuesday’s regular town council meeting. Voting in favour of the motion were councillors Verhaeghe, Joanne Peckham, Shelly Gurba and Steve Schafer, and against were Mayor Roger Morrill and councillors Nichole Adams and Tanu Tyszka-Evans.
“I’m just asking for fair compensation,” Gurba told council.
“We will be chased out of town with pitchforks and torches,” said Tyszka-Evans after the motion passed. “We’re public servants, and the keyword there is servant. We were fairly compensated for the work we did before,” he said later.
The motion increased both base pay and daily meeting rates. Previously, councillors received $767.66 base pay per month and the mayor $1,121.96, according to Adams. Now, councillors are set to receive $1,000 per month and the mayor $1,500 as base pay.
Pay for meetings has also increased. Before, council members would receive $90 for half-day meetings they attended (under four hours) and $180 for any meeting over four hours. Meetings under four hours would be added together to determine how many half-day meetings were attended in total, which would determine compensation.
Under the new rates, council members will receive $120 for every half-day meeting (meetings will not be added up to determine total compensation) and $240 for a full-day meeting, and for any meeting running more than eight hours, council will receive a maximum of $300.
For example, according to Adams, under the old rate, if a councillor attended a two-hour meeting on Monday and another on Tuesday, they would receive $90 remuneration, as the pair of two-hour meetings adding up to one half day. With the new system, if a councillor were to attend the same two meetings, they would receive $240 remuneration.
The new rates are retroactively effective Feb. 1, 2014.
A draft policy was created by town chief administrative officer Ryan Maier after administration reviewed the remuneration rates of nearby or comparable Alberta municipal councils, though the policy council passed was modified from Maier’s original proposal.
Maier found that numbers vary and municipalities calculate remuneration in different ways. However, he found the Athabasca mayor and councillors were near the lower end of the pay spectrum.
“At the end of the day, it did show that our council, in comparison to other councils, is probably not in the middle of the pack,” Maier said in an interview with the Advocate.
“The Town of Athabasca was considerably below the mean and median surveyed according to the numbers council was looking at,” Morrill said.
Despite this, Morrill voted against the motion, stating the timing and size of the raise as factors in that decision.
“An increase of this magnitude causes me concern, especially when it comes from within the governing body.
“I don’t like the timing with such a magnitude of change. My preference is for something like this to occur just before an election, not after an election,” Morrill said.
However, the majority of councillors agreed with the increase.
“I have no concerns with an increase to council remunerations as it is a fact that we are paid lower than our equal counterparts in other communities our size,” said Peckham.
The same cannot be said for Adams, who saw the motion as a “flurry of spending.”
“I was perfectly happy with the pay coming in. I’m a new councillor. I knew what the pay was, and I wasn’t expecting to give myself a pay raise on the job.
“I’m very disappointed in it because I do feel that we have a lot of other priorities we need money for, and that’s taking away from things like infrastructure and other items we need to be looking at,” Adams said.
Adams believes that council didn’t consider how fast the numbers would add up. She cannot see how the town will manage to foot the bill without raising taxes.
“I would consider that a massive victory if we managed to not raise taxes,” Adams said.
Tyszka-Evans questioned the timing of such a raise.
“I don’t know a single employer who gives their employees a raise after only four months. In my opinion, we haven’t proven ourselves to the taxpayers of this town.”
“If councillor Evans or Adams think they are paid too high, they could always give that money back to the town,” Peckham said.
“I’m not sure why I would give it back to the town, because this council is so incredibly wasteful with the money it already has, why would I give it more to waste?” said Adams.
“I’m here to serve my community, not get rich off them,” she said.
Under a slightly modified subsistence policy also passed last Tuesday, council will continue to receive $51 per day for meals or be reimbursed by receipt while away on council business. Council will be paid 51 cents per kilometre for mileage, a drop from 53 cents previously.
Also included in the new policy is an increase to an honorarium giving incentive to council to stay with friends or family while away on town business. This honorarium has been raised from $25 to $50.
