New Westminster city council are receiving a 6.8 per cent boost to their salaries in 2023.
On Monday, council received a staff report on its 2023 remuneration, which has an increase based on the council remuneration policy approved in 2019. Using that policy, which is based on the Consumer Price Index for B.C., the mayor’s salary will increase from $137,645 in 2022 to $147,004 and councillors’ salaries will increase from $52,940 to $56,539.
“The Statistic Canada CPI (Consumer Price Index) for British Columbia from Jan. 1, 2022 to Dec. 31, 2022 was 6.8 per cent,” said the report. “As such, council will receive a 6.8 per cent remuneration increase for 2023.”
According to the report, the total increase for all council members in 2023 will be $30,953. The increases are retroactive to Jan. 1.
Coun. Daniel Fontaine applauded the efforts of the previous council and staff for establishing a policy that removed elected officials from the process of setting their remuneration. Fontaine said he’s a firm believer in making sure elected officials are properly paid and receive compensation that’s commensurate with the work they do.
Fontaine, however, said he was “really struggling” to support a 6.8 per cent increase to council remuneration at a time when many people are “hurting” and taxpayers are seeing a 6.4 per cent increase to their property tax bills.
“The timing of us giving this this pay hike to ourselves, I think it’s unfortunate; the optics are really bad. So I will be voting against the seven per cent increase with the understanding and the acknowledgement of the work that’s been done, and the fact that I wish I could propose another process that would produce a different result,” he said. “It is what it is; it’s tied to the rate of inflation, and inflation is seven per cent. I can’t in good conscience vote in favor of that this year, just given what our citizens are facing in terms of their own personal finances.”
Mayor Patrick Johnstone noted that council was voting to receive a report on remuneration for information purposes only, and not to approve the remuneration as that’s something determined according to the city policy.
“The point of this policy was to actually separate elected people, as much as possible, from having to make decisions on the fly on their own pay raise every year,” he said.
Fontaine said he’s spoken to elected officials in some cities who follow a similar process, but the reports on council remuneration aren’t presented to council.
“They don’t even come in for information,” he said. “It’s automatically done.”
Coun. Tasha Henderson quoted a post Fontaine wrote for the City Caucus blog in February 2009 in which he stated “there’s never a good time to give a politician a raise” and he expressed concern that “lowballing” the compensation eliminates the option for some people to serve on city council. She said Fontaine’s blog post was written at a time when there was a “very challenging” economic climate.
“People were really, really struggling, not unlike where we are today,” she said. “So I would just say that I agree with the points that he’s laid out here in this blog. And while it’s not easy and it’s not popular, I think it is helpful for us to follow clear unbiased policy around wage increases and have it tied to inflation, like other cities do, and not subject to the politics of the day.”
In a 5-2 vote, council received the report on 2023 council remuneration. The vote was split on party lines, with Community First council members Johnstone, Henderson, Ruby Campbell, Jaimie McEvoy and Nadine Nakagawa voting in favour of receiving the report for information and New West Progressive councillors Fontaine and Paul Minhas voting against receiving the report.
Remuneration policy
Following Monday’s meeting, the Record contacted city staff about the process that would be required for approving remuneration that differed from that recommended by the city’s policy.
Peter DeJong, the city’s corporate officer, said the staff report was essentially provided for information and transparency purposes. He said the council remuneration policy that was attached to the report sets out the process and criteria for quadrennial review by an independent consultant in the months before each election, with annual adjustments determined by reference to the prior year’s Consumer Price Index.
“This kind of model is considered best practice for local governments and is intended to mitigate, to the extent possible, the politics that sometimes surrounds the issue of council remuneration, through independent review, external indices and timing,” he said in an email to the Record.
Could council have taken action at Monday’s meeting to reduce its 2023 remuneration 2023?
“In order to change the effective result to council remuneration for this year, council would’ve needed to pass a resolution to undertake another review of the policy only a year after the last quadrennial review, or amend the annual CPI adjustment contained in the policy to commence a process and discussion to override it,” he said. “However, I would suggest that doing so would’ve been counter to the objectives inherent in adopting and refining the policy over the years and would’ve overlooked the cyclical highs and lows in the CPI that come with a dispassionate big-picture perspective of the issue.”
