{"id":37362,"date":"2025-12-11T15:24:51","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T20:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=37362"},"modified":"2025-12-11T15:25:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T20:25:07","slug":"committee-consultant-rejected-in-review-of-council-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/committee-consultant-rejected-in-review-of-council-pay\/","title":{"rendered":"Committee, consultant rejected in review of Council pay"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The thorny issue of how much Aurora Councillors should be paid could be resolved ahead of the inauguration of the 2026-2030 Council term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current Council this week rejected recommendations to strike a Council Compensation Committee to review salaries, while also voting against engaging an external consultant to provide input.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, Council voted to leave the matter to staff, who have been tasked with delivering a report to lawmakers in the New Year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Had Council greenlit the recommendations before them from staff this week, Aurora would have begun recruiting Committee members in January, with a focus on \u201censuring a diverse and representative group of citizens is selected,\u201d while the consultant began the work of data gathering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A final report bringing together the findings of the consultant and committee alike would have been presented for Council\u2019s review by the end of April.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue of Council\u2019s salary has been a hot-button community issue in the second half of this term of Council, with the incumbent Council voting 4 \u2013 3 to adopt the salary recommendations brought forward by a similar Committee struck by Council in 2023. This decision, however, was ultimately vetoed by Mayor Tom Mrakas using the then-new Strong Mayor powers, given to dozens of Ontario municipalities by the Provincial government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recommendation to strike the Committee was tentatively approved by Council at the Committee level last week, but some lawmakers suggested doing so was simply reinventing the wheel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt this point, I really think the consultant can do its job and I have full faith that the consultant has the professionalism, the capability in order to come up with the right numbers that are appropriate for Council,\u201d said Ward 2 Councillor Rachel Gilliland. \u201cI don\u2019t think there is a need for this Committee at this point. We\u2019ve already gone through this process and that\u2019s why we\u2019re getting a third party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI certainly want to take the political side out of this, and I think the cleanest and best way of doing this is to just leave it clean and leave it to the consultant because that\u2019s, I think, what we should be doing \u2013 just leave it to the professionals and they will guide us in a direction that makes the most sense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ward 4 Councillor Michael Thompson said he was supportive of the suggestion to just stick with the Consultant for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to engage a consultant \u2013 let the consultant do the work and come back to Council with a report,\u201d he said. \u201cIf at that time Council is still not satisfied, then we can discuss the need for the formation of a Committee, but for now I would say let\u2019s just go forward with the consultant and see what they have to say.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A different perspective was offered by Ward 5 Councillor John Gallo, who said bringing on the consultant was \u201cwasting\u201d $25,000. Instead, he said current municipal staff are capable of carrying out the work the consultant will be tasked with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have no issues with a Committee being struck to help them out and get a sense of what the community feels regarding this,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t agree with the scope [of the Committee] because the first line in its purpose is\u2026 to review and comment on the consultant\u2019s recommendations on the compensation level for the current elected members of Council.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t make any sense to me why the Committee would only comment on the current compensation for members of Council. This is designed for the next term. I think the decision has always been made to spend $25,000 through the Mayor\u2019s Budget and his decision to do that\u2026. We\u2019re not going to backtrack, I guess, although I don\u2019t agree with it, and I think that could have easily been done in-house. But, if the will of Council is to move in this direction, I am fine with that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor Tom Mrakas, in response, said as the RFP had just been issued for the consultant, Council could still make an amendment to cancel it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The thorny issue of how much Aurora Councillors should be paid could be resolved ahead of the inauguration of the 2026-2030 Council term. The current Council this week rejected recommendations to strike a Council Compensation Committee to review salaries, while also voting against engaging an external consultant to provide input. Instead, Council voted to leave […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9IC","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 11:17:50","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37363,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37362\/revisions\/37363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}