How much should municipal councillors be paid?
That is the question Town of Barrhead Coun. Don Smith brought up when he asked administration to research what other municipalities were doing in respect to councillor compensation.
More specifically Smith is curious as to what other municipalities are doing or not doing to compensate their elected officials in light of the decision by the Federal government to peel back a decades-old tax break where municipally elected officials do not have to pay income tax on one-third of their salary starting in 2019.
First of all, we say it is about time.
We agree with the rationale behind the change, which was stated in page 208 of the 2017 Federal budget where it says, ‘In today’s workforce, many Canadians receive benefits such as a daily food allowance or transit fare, which are counted as taxable income. Yet certain tax measures allow some individuals to pay less than their fair share of taxes on such benefit.’
Most notably this means elected municipal officials although from our understanding school board trustees and provincial MLAs are included in this group.
While we do not begrudge anyone for getting any salary or legally taking advantage of the tax laws that exist we believe that elected officials should have to play by the same rules the rest of us have to.
Depending on a person’s profession, Canadian tax regulations, allow workers to deduct legitimate work expenses and that is all elected officials should be able to do, not automatically take a one-third off the top.
Nor do we believe that councillors and trustees, due to this change in the tax law, are due an automatic pay bump.
Being an elected municipal official, in a community such as Barrhead, is a part-time job. One we believe they are adequately compensated for. According to the Town of Barrhead’s 2016 annual financial statement and auditor’s report the mayor received $35,414 in salary and benefits while councillors ranged from $19,605 to $24,423. On the county side the top earner for 2017 was reeve Doug Drozd who earned $40,278 in salary and benefits. Dennis Nanninga who earned the least at $29,699.
Again, keep in mind this is a part-time job and is not meant to be a person’s sole source of income.
Unfortunately, what we believe is likely to happen, is that both the town and county councillors will end up voting themselves a raise to compensate for the loss of income. Just like many other municipalities across the country have already done.
So much for leveling the playing field.
