A recent accounting of council’s pay, benefits, and expenses has renewed a long-standing discussion at city hall about whether the role of city councillor should be considered full-time or part-time.
Currently, the fourteen elected positions are considered a “unique” role, rather than formal employment.
The annual remuneration and expense report going before a committee next week reveals that seven of 14 councillors received over $100,000 last year in combined base pay, benefits, and expenses.
Total remuneration and expenses paid to councillors last year ranged from $86,186 (Coun. Paul Van Meerbergen) to $119,567 (Coun. Susan Stevenson).
“We’ve got some councillors who have full-time jobs and do this on the side - and there’s no right or wrong - but that’s what we have,” Stevenson told CTV News. “That [part-time] councillor obviously isn’t going to be spending a lot of expenses. Then you’ve got somebody like me who’s doing it full-time and is on various boards and commissions.”
She believes the format of the annual report on remuneration and expenses that adds up each councillor’s base pay, benefits, and expenses, could leave constituents with the wrong impression.
However, the Municipal Act (2001) requires city staff to “… on or before March 31 provide to the council of the municipality an itemized statement on remuneration and expenses paid in the previous year.”
The base pay - also known as the stipend - paid to councillors is $65,138.
Last January, council boosted the stipend of the deputy mayor and budget chair positions by 12.5 per cent to recognize the additional workload.
Those positions earned $73,279 in 2024.
Total benefits collected by each councillor add more than $20,000 annually to each member’s compensation, including the option of receiving a vehicle allowance/reimbursement (up to $2,124).
Councillors were also reimbursed for eligible expenses up to a maximum $15,000, a figure that drops to $13,500 in 2025.
And finally, fees to attend certain municipal conferences were also paid by city hall.
Prior to a decision by the previous council, the stipends were clearly reported each year in a public report about annual increases to council pay.
However, because council felt that the process of voting themselves an annual raise had become overly politicized—they switched to an automatically awarded increase based on census data.
That has left the financial disclosure of councillor remuneration to the report that combines stipends with benefits and expenses.
Stevenson will ask about clearer reporting methods at a committee meeting on March 3.
“What are best practices? When was the last time we looked at this? How can we give as much information as possible to the public?” she explained. “We want to be as open and transparent as we can, but also making it easy to understand.”
Meanwhile on Friday, the first meeting of the five-member Council Resourcing Review Task Force began an independent review of council compensation and expense policies.
The question of whether councillors should be considered full-time or part-time was raised by task force member and former city councillor Mariam Hamou.
“If we’re tasked to do this, are we allowed to say we want this to be a full-time job?” Hamou asked colleagues.
Dr. Martin Horak, a political scientist who will chair the task force explained, “Legislation (the Municipal Act) speaks about council roles and the role of council as a public service and service to the community, rather than as employment in the standard sense of the term.”
The task force made no recommendations at its first meeting.
Instead, their discussion focussed on its upcoming approach including a survey of similar sized Ontario cities about councillor job descriptions, pay, benefits, and expense policies.
They will also seek input from current councillors and members of the public.
“Whether public attitudes and opinions on councillor compensation have changed significantly over time, because previous task forces have done surveys and they’ve held meetings and they’ve come up with information as well. So we’re going to be looking at where is the public at [now]?” Horak said.
The five-member task force is being asked by council to consider:
- base compensation for members of council and the mayor
- supplementary compensation and funding source for additional work, such as stipends for board and committee service
- councillor workload; including minimum workload expectation, balancing workloads across council
- councillor severance pay
- councillor role description
- the council member’s Expense Account Policy
Currently, councillors set their own performance expectations with few rules regarding attendance, communication with constituents, and participation on external boards and commissions.
Mayor Josh Morgan earned $157,661 in base salary, with expenses and benefits increasing his total remuneration to $226,893.
The task force is expected to have its recommendations presented to a council committee by October.
