{"id":7567,"date":"2014-07-30T15:20:22","date_gmt":"2014-07-30T19:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=7567"},"modified":"2014-08-06T04:41:30","modified_gmt":"2014-08-06T08:41:30","slug":"salaries-for-mayor-and-council-to-stay-as-isfor-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/salaries-for-mayor-and-council-to-stay-as-isfor-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Salaries for Mayor and Council to stay as-is\u2026for now"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pegging salaries for the Mayor of Aurora and Councillors on a more predictable scale is likely to be an issue tackled by the class of 2018, following a Council decision this month. <\/p>\n

Earlier in July, a report before Council said the salaries currently earned by Mayor Geoffrey Dawe and Council were below their counterparts across York Region and the GTA. Municipal staff put forward a number of options to get Aurora\u2019s lawmakers up to snuff, as far as their colleagues were concerned, including using the same grading method used by Town Hall in setting salaries for Town employees. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn keeping with the Corporate staff compensation policy of paying at the 50th percentile of the marketplace and eliminating the high and low, the mean annual salaries for the survey data set for Mayor and Councillor are $80,737 and $33,614 respectively,\u201d said Aurora CEO Neil Garbe in his report to Council.<\/p>\n

Currently, Mayor Dawe earns a salary of $57,719 annually outside of what he earns as Aurora\u2019s representative at Regional Council. Councillors take in $27,522 annually. Beginning in the next term of Council, the Mayor\u2019s salary will increase to $66,719, following Council\u2019s approval of a $9,000 pay increase last year. <\/p>\n

For many members of Council, however, it was simply too late in the term to consider grading the salaries of Aurora\u2019s elected body.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we would all recognize around the table we\u2019re paid fairly low for what we do and looking at an increase for the next term is probably warranted,\u201d said Councillor Paul Pirri. \u201cWith that said, in my view, I don\u2019t believe it is appropriate at this point in time to be doing that. I look at the environment we\u2019re in economically and it is not one that I am overly optimistic about in the near future. I have a more bearish view on this from an economic standpoint. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf Council had looked at this in 2007, they would have thought this would be something great we should move forward on. If you wanted a year with this in 2008, people would recognize the timing just wasn\u2019t appropriate to do that. My preference is to leave things as they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Mayor Dawe, the genesis of the options before Council stemmed back to request from Council to look at Council compensation wholesale, with an attempt to remove compensation out of the political realm and put it on the administrative shoulders of Town Staff. Earlier in their term, the incumbent Council established a citizens committee to look at salaries for Mayor and Council, but their suggestions were largely rejected by Council, with the exception of the $9,000 mayoral boost for the next term.<\/p>\n

\u201c[This was to\u2026] put it on the administrative side to define what our salary rates are, what the position of a Councillor would represent and what the position of Mayor would represent,\u201d said Mayor Dawe. \u201cThis is more from a responsibility point of view, as opposed to a necessary function point of view. It provides an objective level as to what your range should be, as it is always a challenging question to sit here and debate your own raise, whether or not there should even be one.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cdifficulty\u201d in separating \u201cpolitics from policy\u201d was one Councillor Michael Thompson said he recognized. At first blush, he said he believed the report provided a good methodology in setting these rates, but he wanted more information on the different financial levels available.
\nVoting upon a methodology was something he was prepared to do at that point, but he added further investigation was needed on just what the appropriate salary grade level would be.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is an awkward position to make and I think it is too bad we didn\u2019t have this discussion in the first year of our term,\u201d added Councillor John Gallo. \u201cI believe early on in the term is when these discussions should take place. It is so close to an election and my comfort level in approving any increases is not very high. My preference is to maintain the status quo.\u201d<\/p>\n

For some Councillors, however, the greater question around the table was not necessarily how much a Councillor makes, but whether they should be considered part-time positions, as they currently are. <\/p>\n

\u201c[The Council Compensation Committee] recommended a pay increase of the Mayor\u2019s salary by $9,000 and when it came to Councillor\u2019s salaries, the economy would not support an increase for Councillors and I took exception to that,\u201d said Councillor Buck. \u201cThe economy has an effect on everybody and if a Councillor is doing his or her job properly, the number of hours that might be spent on it could easily be equated to a full time position, just as the Mayor\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noting she agreed that this was not the right time to move forward with grading the salaries, Councillor Gaertner expressed a similar view. \u201cI am not entirely sure this is a part-time job. I do agree with Councillor Thompson it might be appropriate to discuss the methodology\u2026so there is no political motivation attributed to it, after all I think many of us are going to be running in the next election, so we\u2019re not exactly arm\u2019s length.
\n\u201cThis is a problem that needs to be sorted out.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pegging salaries for the Mayor of Aurora and Councillors on a more predictable scale is likely to be an issue tackled by the class of 2018, following a Council decision this month. <\/p>\n

Earlier in July, a…<\/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_feature_clip_id":0,"_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-7567","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\/p3D2k4-1Y3","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-25 00:38:52","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\/7567","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=7567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}