Council Compensation (April 2023)
When I first started on council, I would often write a yearly post on City Council compensation. Since my wage is paid for by all Edmontonians, I believe it’s important for everyone to know how Council wages are set. If you have read those posts in the past, some of this will be a repeat but as it has been a while since my last post on this topic, I thought it would be good to write an update.
Back in 2006, a decision was made by that City Council to stop voting on their own salaries. The process in place now is that every two terms, an independent committee will complete a review and provide recommendations to Council on what the compensation should be. For those interested in reading the 2006, 2012, 2017, and 2020 reports, please visit this site and scroll to the bottom of the page where you can access all of the reports.
I believe that having our compensation determined independently is the correct approach. When the Council of 2012 was debating the recommendations from the independent committee, I had the chance to watch the live discussion. I strongly agreed with the process back then and over a decade later, I still think it is the best process because it eliminates any political involvement around salaries.
This is the only order of government that does not set our own wages and I do not believe we should ever be involved in that decision as there would be no way to remain unbiased. It is worth noting that the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation also supports the approach of having an independent committee set our wages.
Over the years, the recommendations that were brought forward by the independent committee and subsequently approved by Council requires that any change to our wages, up or down, are tied to Statistic Canada's Average Weekly Earnings of Albertans. They use the 12 month average starting from September of the previous year. Over my time on council we have experienced both increases and decreases. As you can imagine, there usually aren’t stories in the news when we get a decrease or a freeze but there almost always is when we get an increase.
One important note is that back in 2020, the independent committee also recommended that Council wages be frozen for 2021 and 2022. This recommendation was the only recommendation made to take effect during the term instead of waiting until the new term of council. They felt it was appropriate to freeze wages because the preliminary forecasts of Average Weekly Earnings data pointed to the possibility of an annual increase in January 2021 in the range of 2.9% to slightly above 5%. As I have every time the independent committee provides their recommendations, I supported that change.
As mentioned at the start, for those of you who read what I wrote many years ago, this post looks similar. As long as our wages are determined independently, it is unlikely this post will change as the process remains the same until the next Council receives a new set of recommendations from an independent committee in 2024. With that said, it is still important to review this every year so people understand the independent process. If you have any questions or comments, please let me know.
