By John Francis
There was a lively debate at MNBP Council’s May 23 Meeting on the subject of pay for Council members. Deputy Mayor Rod Anderson kicked off the discussion by suggesting that Council’s pay should double.
The consultant’s report underpinning that debate was first submitted last year, and was brought up at Council’s Sept 12 Meeting.
At that point, Councillor Megan Myles had already announced that she would not be running in last fall’s municipal election. One of the important factors informing her decision was the difficulty in surviving on a Councillor’s pay.
She spoke at length at that Sept 12 Meeting. She pointed out that there had been ten candidates for Councillor in the 2018 election, but in 2022, there were only five. She alluded to a presentation given by Karla Trudgen of The Meeting Place, which stated that a living wage for our region was $21 per hour. Councillor Myles estimated that the Councillor position is about 0.5 FTE (half of full-time hours).
Let me do the arithmetic on that: full-time hours would be 50 weeks at 37.5 hours, or 1,875 hours. At $21 per hour, that comes to $39,375. Half of that would be $19,687.50. (Fun Fact: if we use Megan Myles’ estimate that Council is a half-time job, the current pay for Councillor and Deputy Mayor works out to less than minimum wage.)
As Councillor Myles said at the time,
“None of us are doing this for the money, but we do need to live…”
She also argued that the comparators aren’t really comparable, in that few of them have the complexity, the waterfront or the growth that MNBP is experiencing.
I would point out that most of them have much lower housing costs than we do, which means a much lower cost of living…
The attached charts show some numbers from last year’s Ward & Uptigrove report to MNBP. The full report can be found online in the Agenda for the May 23, 2023 Meeting.
What do you think is fair?
