County councillors will see a significant increase in their paycheques.
At a meeting Tuesday, council discussed a variety of options on changes to existing base salary and per diem rates for the warden and councillors, ultimately opting for the one that would see yearly adjustments to council base salary levels be applied by forgoing an annual cost-of-living adjustment and instead applying a percentage equal to the average of the County of Simcoe non-union salary band adjustments.
The raise will reflect the 60th percentile of the county’s comparator group each year, and it’ll be phased in over the next three years, with one-third being allocated per year.
Currently, the warden earns $86,251 and the deputy warden makes $55,041.
Councillors get a base salary of $12,054 with an additional $6,025 in per diems for a total annual salary of $18,079.
In 2027, the total base salary for councillors will be $41,717, not including meeting per diems.
Council modified the motion on the floor. The warden will receive the same incremental annual increase, but those numbers will need to be confirmed by staff and were not available immediately. They will be presented back to county council through a bylaw at a future meeting.
The topic of remuneration was initially discussed at length during a governance workshop in June, when councillors were presented with options. Staff were then asked to conduct a more in-depth review of council wages by looking at what other councillors in similar regions earn.
Based on the information reported by staff, when using the total benchmark group, there is a “large difference between the current County of Simcoe warden and councillor compensation and the comparable compensation at any percentile.”
Severn Township Deputy Mayor Judith Cox said she took issue with the percentage increase, noting even if it wasn’t to occur until the next term of council, the money would ultimately be coming out of the pockets of county ratepayers.
“I feel if we were going to do any increase, we should do it in increments,” she said during Tuesday’s meeting. “When we look at the wage comparators … we need to make sure we are comparing apples to apples. With the economy the way it is right now, I can’t in good faith, for the residents of Simcoe County, go with such a high increase.”
Collingwood Deputy Mayor Tim Fryer said he would not be supporting any kind of increase to councillor wages.
“I have read the report, and understand the reasoning … but I maintain that the structure we have right now has been given due thought in putting it together. The compensation that was being given to councillors was based on the fact that there (are) 32 of us, and I am not in support of any change,” he said.
Ramara Township Deputy Mayor Keith Bell said he believed people should be paid what they’re worth.
“My vote would be to actually vote it in immediately. If this is what we should be getting paid, then it’s what we should be getting paid. I have been in business for over 30 years, and if an employee came to me and said the average for (their) position was this much and (they) were (earning) less than half of what it should be, I’d say we needed to correct that immediately,” he said.
The role, added Bell, comes with a significant amount of responsibility, a lot of which takes councillors away from their own families and jobs.
“When I take the time away from my job, my business, I have to make it up on weekends, with holiday pay and all of those things (affecting) my family life, and I think the compensation should make sense,” he said.
Collingwood Mayor Yvonne Hamlin was in favour of increasing council pay for the next term, noting part of what is important for local government is encouraging the younger generation to begin to “step up.”
“Those who are working full time take time off from those jobs to sit as councillors and county council. We should at least be attempting to match some of the funds they are losing. It shouldn’t be a prerequisite for sitting on a local council that you don’t need any other income or you’re retired,” she said. “As the (baby) boomers are aging out — I confess, I am one — we have to start encouraging the younger generation that are still working to come and step into these positions … and I think we need to increase the salary to reflect that.”
Bradford West Gwillimbury Mayor James Leduc said his goal is to “change the colour of the hair” in the county council chamber.
“We need to look at the next generation coming into this business. In Bradford, we did a raise … and the reason was to attract the younger generation. I thought if we could put a salary on the table where … they could end up staying home, supporting their community … and be a councillor on that type of salary because it wouldn’t impact their financial burden in terms of raising their children,” he said. “This house is well underpaid. We talk about a living wage in this county. Why shouldn’t we have a living wage?”
The decision to change salaries is a political one, acknowledged Warden Basil Clarke, but he said tough decisions come with the territory.
“We are politicians and our job is to make every decision political. If you want to take the politics out of any decision, you’d enter the facts into a computer and it would spit out an answer and that’s what we’d do. Our job as politicians is to take the data, then look at what the people want and try to find that balance,” he said. “Do people want to see us get a raise? Absolutely not. Do they expect us to get paid a fair salary for what we do? I think the answer is ‘yes.’ Our fairest salary is 60th percentile … Will the people be offended by the percentage? Probably, but this council hasn’t raised their pay in 20 years, so of course the numbers came back extreme.”
In a statement sent to BarrieToday following the meeting, Clarke said council recognized it was a challenging conversation to have. However, the previous rate of compensation for councillors and heads of council was “significantly behind other municipalities of similar size, service delivery and governing oversight.”
“This is due to making no changes to council salaries for the past several years, despite the continual rise of inflation and cost of living. We want to attract the best candidates to enter into local and county government, including those who may still be in the workforce and who further represent the demographics of our growing county,” he said.
The decision to implement incremental increases in compensation over the next three years will help lessen the impact on the budget, while slowly bringing the rates of compensation up to the levels of other municipalities, Clarke said, adding that as this occurs, council will continue to work through the legislative process to approve an appointed, full-time warden starting in the 2026 term.
