{"id":37368,"date":"2025-12-18T16:05:04","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T21:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=37368"},"modified":"2025-12-23T14:03:28","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T19:03:28","slug":"council-compensation-will-be-looked-at-by-staff-instead-of-consultant-committee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/council-compensation-will-be-looked-at-by-staff-instead-of-consultant-committee\/","title":{"rendered":"Council compensation will be looked at by staff instead of consultant, committee"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Salaries for the next Council term could be determined by municipal staff after Council nixed striking a committee and hiring an external consultant to examine the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week\u2019s decision was a U-turn following the December 2 Committee of the Whole meeting where lawmakers gave both the external consultant and the striking of a citizen committee the green light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making a move to cancel the committee was Ward 2 Councillor Rachel Gilliland who said she preferred to \u201callow the consultant to do its work\u201d based on findings from the last citizen committee struck to look at Council pay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have the data already and I\u2019m sure the consultant is also going to do additional work, that\u2019s what we\u2019re paying them to do \u2013 $25,000 actually estimated,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m interested to see what the consultant comes back with. At the end of the day, when the consultant comes back with the recommendations at that point in time with Council we can make a decision whether or not we approve, receive, or whatever we\u2019re going to do, but I do believe we already have that information and I certainly feel the consultant\u2019s going to do the job that we hired them to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor Gilliland\u2019s motion to take the committee out of the equation was approved by Council, but not without opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ward 5 Councillor John Gallo, for instance, said he disagreed with the viewpoint offered by Councillor Gilliland, and instead preferred to keep the committee and ditch the consultant, but said citizen-led input was valuable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think our staff is more than capable and I think our residents are more than capable of putting this information together and providing a report to us to make a decision for the next Council,\u201d said Gallo. \u201cI have absolutely no interest [in] spending $25,000 (for a consultant). It\u2019s somewhat hypocritical when this first came to us through a committee\u2019s recommendations to spend money on our salaries. It was vetoed, now we\u2019re spending $25,000 to figure out how to address our salaries. It just doesn\u2019t make any sense to me. I wish there was a committee to oversee that, but that\u2019s fine. Staff are more than capable of figuring this out. Really what it ends up being is math. I believe we should be in the 50th<\/sup> percentile. I\u2019ve always believed that. That\u2019s not very difficult to figure out\u2026 especially now, more than ever, we should not be spending $25,000 to figure that out. To me, that\u2019s a total waste of money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some Council members, on the other hand, thought the money would be well-spent to have a third-party look at compensation and take the \u201cpolitics\u201d out of the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to save money wherever we can, but I would like to take this for one-time, arm\u2019s length, and have a consultant and possibly decide for the future about the percentile and really just not have anybody associated with the Town be making this decision at this time, just because of what we\u2019ve been through,\u201d said Ward 3 Councillor Wendy Gaertner, referencing the fraught discussions around Council compensation that happened around the table last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like to spend the money, but I think this is a place to spend the money,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ward 1 Councillor Ron Weese said he saw both sides of the coin and while he was interested in saving money, there was value in a consultant bringing back \u201can external, objective report.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s going to come back to Council anyway to be enacted, so we\u2019ll have the opportunity to judge that based on the report,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m thinking that this may not be a bad thing for this one time to pay for the consultant, to have that objective and professional view\u2026. I see both positions, but I think it\u2019s time for some objectivity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Council\u2019s ultimate decision will leave recommendations up to staff, a move that Aurora CAO Doug Nadorozny suggested was unusual compared to past practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe generally like to get outside consultants involved when we\u2019re looking across the range of whether it\u2019s internal compensation or Council compensation,\u201d he said. \u201cWe usually engage outside consultants who are familiar with the environment, but if we\u2019re directed, then we\u2019ll figure out how to gather what information we can and bring something back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe do [that] for staff compensation so that there\u2019s an outside party and it\u2019s not seen as self-serving by staff. Obviously, staff looking at Council [compensation] is not the same relationship as staff looking after other staff, so there\u2019s a bit of separation there. It\u2019s more to get the outside expertise and the knowledge of what\u2019s going on in the broader environment, but I guess it is something we could research on our own if need be.\u201d<\/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":"

Salaries for the next Council term could be determined by municipal staff after Council nixed striking a committee and hiring an external consultant to examine the issue. Last week\u2019s decision was a U-turn following the December 2 Committee of the Whole meeting where lawmakers gave both the external consultant and the striking of a citizen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37368","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\/p3D2k4-9II","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 09:19:16","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\/37368","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=37368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37369,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37368\/revisions\/37369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}