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A new compensation system for HRM councillors and the mayor was viciously shot down at City Hall this week, but problems with the current salary formula remain.
A report asking to change HRM council’s pay and base it off of the average salary for a full-time HRM resident was debated at a stumbling, confrontational meeting on Tuesday, with councillors at times attacking each other, public perception of their jobs and the very committee they asked to look into this issue over a year ago.
“This whole thing has been, in my opinion, and my opinion only, a flawed process,” said councillor Russell Walker. “To me, this report has a lot of questions that need to be answered.”
The report came from a specially created independent committee that spent most of the last year studying council’s pay structure. Along with proposed changes to pensions and creating severance pay for councillors, the report recommended altering the system used to calculate compensation by basing salaries off the average annual earnings of a full-time working HRM resident.
“Doesn’t it make sense to compare our councillors to what people make in Halifax? That was the rationale to our thinking,” said Gerald Walsh, a chartered accountant who headed up the volunteer-committee. and the owner of an executive search firm that annually produces a salary guide for Atlantic Canadian businesses.
Under the committee’s proposed system, councillors would have made an extra 25 percent on top of the average full-time employed HRM resident, while the deputy mayor would have received 1.1 times and the mayor 2.2 times a councillor’s pay. Based on the latest census data from Statistics Canada, that would have set council’s compensation at roughly $74,000 and the mayor’s at $163,000. Municipal councillors in HRM currently make $83,653 annually and mayor Mike Savage makes $176,000, so the committee recommended freezing those salaries until the municipality’s workforce caught up.
But councillors on Tuesday took issue with the magic number of 1.25 and the lack of supporting evidence in the committee’s report.
Deputy mayor Matt Whitman called the report “reckless” and chastised the committee members present for not understanding the duties of a deputy mayor.
“In hindsight, perhaps we could have put more data in to back up our conclusions,” Walsh said later to reporters. “We were hopeful the report would have been clearer.”
Currently city council’s salaries are tabulated annually with the average from a list of comparable Canadian cities plus an extra 25 percent. That system is “arbitrary” and “too subjective” according to the compensation committee. It doesn’t take into account mitigating factors like the municipality’s economic strength or council size, while using HRM itself in the list of comparable cities (thereby almost guaranteeing council a raise).
But one of the biggest overall issues is that nearly every comparable city in that list is using the same system to determine its own council’s pay. Everyone’s looking at what the other guys are doing, said Walsh, which results in salaries ratcheting up across the board.
“The formula, whether we go with this recommendation or not, needs to be changed,” Waye Mason told his fellow councillors, some of whom were furious at the implication they were being overpaid when $80,000 per year is low for what they could make in the private sector.
“We’re not employees. We’re public servants,” replied Mason. “To benchmark us, to look at what I do in the run of the day and compare that to the private sector, I don’t think that’s appropriate…There are plenty of people in our society who work more than they’re paid.”
Other councillors had more personal problems with the report.
“Some clown called into Rick Howe the other day and said ‘Steve Adams has a job,’” said Stephen Adams, who says he retired a few years ago from the private sector. “Check your facts.”
After several hours of discussion all three recommendations from the compensation committee were defeated. Pension changes were shot down by a vote of 11 to four, severance packages by nine to six and the recommendation to alter council’s salary system was defeated eight to seven. Councillors Brad Johns and Lorelei Nicoll both abstained from voting.
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This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2016.
Listen council, if you enterd the public service to get rich then you entered for all the wrong reasons. Take a look at your personal goals and realign your pay with the realitys of what fellow Halifax residence are making. Wake up
That’s why Dominick Desjardins is running for city council in District 7
“Some clown” says Adams. Classy, with emphasis on the ASS.
Well, three are leaving at the end of the term so I suggest we spread the love across the rest of the remaining councillors and save the three salaries.
The debate, if one could call it that, was ridiculously self-serving. To attack the committee, each member of which has more integrity and knowledge in their little finger than the entire council combined, was especially low. Toss every single one of these bums out in the fall election. Every damn one of them.
I think councillors do work a lot of hours and at all hours of the days and weekends and evenings. So I feel their salary can’t be compared to 9-5 types of workers and their jobs. We want good people, we need to pay them well – I know I would never want their job, not with all the crap that can come with it. I am okay leaving the salaries where they are now, but I am not okay with higher than average annual raises. Not when the average for not only city staff but most employees all over is so much lower. It is not right that they get such a high % raise when for most of the population gets a much lower % and the reality is many private companies have frozen raises for years = 0%. I also think raises should be tied to attendance at city council / committee meetings. No shows at meetings for xx % = no raises.
It seems Matt Whitman feels he is underpaid as deputy mayor and the committee didn’t understand the role of deputy mayor. the only thing he seems to do is make inappropriate tweets about people and only apologizes when he is shamed into it by council. No councillor deserves a raise. Mr Mason seems to have a problem with the process and appears to think he does a lot for what he is paid. Mr Mason you should have known what was involved in the job whne you took and you knew what you would be paid. Another point to Mr Mason and members of council, you are employees and the tax payers are your employers, you were hired by election and you van be fired at the next election, don’t get too comforetable with your sense of entitlement.
OK first of all if you can make more in the private sector, GO TO THE PRIVATE SECTOR!! Second of all HOW are councillors allowed to abstain from this vote? You are literally elected for that reason! Maybe Brad Johns just thought the vote was a regular meeting and as usual decided not to participate
I for one am flummoxed at the Coasts inability to grasp the fact Halifax is NOT a city!!!
Waye Mason is entirely correct on this matter.
Brad Johns abstained, was he even there considering his absentee report. The formula compares Halifax to Vancouver. Get real people. You may as well compare Halifax to New York. No where near the size, incomes or economic development. Vancouver is a modern vibrant growing city.
you cannot as a coyote to watch the hen house. Councillors put in long hours but a lot of that time is wasted. When they ran for the position they knew what it involved and for this group to name their our price is just unacceptable. I work in the private sector and I have to be competitive with other businesses to be successful, which means I cannot name my own price or else I wouldn’t survive. To these councilors, they are not worth the pay they receive, as our continually raise our taxes and never vote any frivolous cost expenditures. In general they are uneducated in financial responsibility.
Councillors should be well paid. I have zero problem with that. From everything I can see, that job is a LOT of work, and I’m not sure you could pay me enough to be civil to residents bitching to me about their neighbour’s cat peeing on their lawn, or whatever completely pointless problems they have.
That being said, the current calculation of pay based on other cities is absolutely stupid. “Councillor” isn’t exactly a mobile job; if we don’t pay them enough compared to Vancouver it’s not like they’re going to leave to be a councillor there. The proposal to base pay on local wages made wayyyyy more sense, and I am very disappointed to see Council shoot it down.