Wouldn't that be interesting?

It was a bit of a surreal moment, hearing the members of the Financial and Administrative Committee (FAC) discuss wage increases for councillors at the meeting this week. Wasn’t it only a few weeks ago that they were calling on all departments, boards and commissions to do more with less? That property taxes had to be frozen?

And wasn’t this the day before the Ontario Government would be bringing down its budget with its austerity measures? Is this really the time to start speculating about a major pay hike?

But that’s what happened last Monday.

In all fairness, council did not request a pay increase. That was an automatic provision of the citizen’s taskforce that was established to make a recommendation on councillors’ stipends. It had recommended no increase for councillors at that time (2011) but that the pay be increased by the amount of the Consumer Price Index or the Labour Index, whichever is lower. In this case, the lower was the CPI of 3.1%.

So there shouldn’t have been anything unusual in the recommendation, except that there was another clause: if non-union staff did not receive a wage increase, neither would councillors. That was the agreement.

Because of the freeze on property taxes, it might reasonably be assumed that staff pay had also been frozen. That certainly seemed to be the assumption of the committee and there was nothing in the report before them to suggest otherwise.

But before the meeting had even begun, a couple of councillors had already decided where they were going with this, and they made no secret of their positions, at least not where the mainstream media were concerned.

Ward 11 Councillor Denise Brown was adamantly opposed to any increase while staff salaries were being frozen. Good for her; that's what the council by-law indicated.

Ward 8 Councillor Paul Hubert tended to agree; his only concern was the inadequate pay for the mayor. It was paltry compared to that of other cities of somewhat similar size, he suggested. In fact, he had been promoting this view to the print and auditory media earlier in the day. It had nothing to do with the current mayor, he pointed out. It was the role of the mayor that he was concerned about. Someone in charge of nearly  an $800 million budget not making as much as, say, an MPP? It was the only full-time job for an elected official in the city. Hubert had had a look at the Sunshine List of public employees earning over $100,000 and our mayor  didn’t look good compared to some other  municipalities. Other communities were paying more. It didn’t speak well of the respect for the office.

It was a great opening for a few other councillors who, although not having a vote on this committee, had considered it worth their while to put an oar in on this issue.

Ward 12 Councillor Harold Usher took pains to point out that, not only had the previous council  not had a pay increase, it had taken a 5% cut in 2009, so the pay was effectively the same as it had been three years ago.

"We shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves," he argued. The workload had increased tremendously. The work councillors do for the community needed to be taken seriously . He had attended meetings of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities; many councillors from cities of the same size got a lot more money, maybe double. It was just not right to not accept this just because councillors were afraid of the community. His workload had quadrupled since he got on council 10 years ago.

Ward 4 Councillor Steve Orser, also not a member of this committee, repeated the refrain. He wasn’t afraid of public opinion. During the 2010 election he had stated he would support a pay raise and he had gotten a stronger vote than in 2006. His constituents wanted somebody full-time. For him, a pay raise was not the issue. A councillor should be full time and act full time. There were a multitude of issues to deal with. For some councillors, it might mean they’d have to quit their other job. So be it. He wanted the public to weigh in, bring it to a public vote, have a plebiscite.

For Mayor Fontana, however, that was too far away. Not for another two and a half years. He wanted something done now.

Councillors Baechler and Branscombe (Wards 5 and 6 respectively) had a different take on the issue. For them, it was not a matter of full-time or part-time, it was a matter of getting the job done, a matter of public service.

Baechler in particular wondered why the issue was before them. They had adopted the recommendations of the citizen’s taskforce on remuneration. Wasn’t the decision just a rubber-stamping of that by-law? Her concern was more with inequalities in workload. Some councillors were doing the heavy lifting, reading, researching, attending meetings, responding to constituents concerns; others frequently didn't  even bother to  show up. She wondered if more appropriate compensation might attract a larger pool of qualified contenders to do the work.

But that brought the issue back to question: Were they simply affirming an existing policy? Were staff paycheques frozen?

The latter question brought some hurried discussion and confusion. Staff got merit pay; that varies with the degree of merit, some getting more than others. They moved up the grid on the anniversary of their hiring, for a while, at least, until they hit the pay ceiling. So their salaries weren’t actually frozen.

But I recalled, somewhat vaguely, that before the end of my term, a new deal had been reached. In light of the 2009 recession, staff salary grids had been frozen; there had been no across the board pay increase. But the overall grid was being adjusted to take effect in a couple of years, maybe January 2012.

And that turned out to be the case. A pay increase for all non-union staff had been granted at the beginning of the year. So there would be no reason that councillors should forfeit their 3.1% pay increase.

It was a moment of relief for some. But Mayor Fontana was not satisfied. It was not about him, but Hubert’s words had got him thinking. Councillors surely deserved more, maybe 50 to 60% of what the mayor gets. After all, they’re on call, 24/7. It’s a commitment, gruelling as heck.

“The public is never happy when politicians ask for anything,” he noted. “It’s a tough job.  In my opinion, you aren’t paid enough. I work 80-90 hours per week.”

He wasn’t complaining, just stating a fact. Although the citizen’s taskforce was to be called on again in 2013 for a review, he felt they couldn’t wait till that long.

“One-third of what a mayor makes is not on for me,” he concluded.  He was in favour of tying the mayor’s salary to that of an MPP and a councillor’s stipend to that of the mayor. ASAP.

But what if councillors got, in addition to their current stipend, merit pay to reflect the contribution they make to the public good?

In the oft-spoken words of Dale Henderson, “Wouldn’t that be interesting?”