Estevan city council has tabled a report from a committee tasked with reviewing the compensation for council members for the duration of the current term.
Monica Kovach, Kevin Smith and Bernadette Wright, who comprised the remuneration committee, presented their report at Monday night’s council meeting.
The committee was struck after the federal government decided to no longer include non-accountable allowances (one-third of their compensation) in the total income for council members. It resulted in a decrease in take-home pay for council members.
If the city is looking to keep the salaries whole, the mayor and council annual wages would need to increase.
The recommendation of the committee is to meet this salary difference halfway.
For 2019, this would increase the mayor’s salary by $3,443, and each of the six councillor salaries would jump by $1,047. There would be further increases in 2020.
Kovach noted that the committee wasn’t unanimous in their decision to have a compromise increase.
Councillors Shelly Veroba and Dennis Moore spoke in opposition to the recommendation. Veroba said she thought council’s compensation should remain the same for the bulk of the term.
“A wage scale was already in place when I got elected in 2016, and the wage scale was for 2016-2020,” said Veroba.
She has spoken with many taxpayers in Estevan, and couldn’t find one who thought it was OK to increase council’s wages.
Moore said he would have rather seen council be fully compensated for the wages they would lose, or not receive any compensation at all, than have the 50-50 solution that was provided.
Other members of council seemed to hint their support for the report, but agreed with the decision to table.
After delivering the report, Wright said she didn’t agree with the committee’s recommendation, citing Moore’s statement. Wright also wanted the committee to do more due diligence before filing its report.
Kovach also pointed out that they did receive one written statement from the public, who believed council should not receive an increase in compensation.
Mayor Roy Ludwig said he wanted council to table the motion to the next meeting, scheduled for April 22, so that they would have time to receive more feedback from the public, and because he wanted to have all members of council in attendance to make the decision. Councillor Greg Hoffort was absent from the meeting.
This week’s edition of the Mercury will have more on this story.
