Victoria approves pay raise for next elected council

City council in Victoria has approved a recommendation to raise the pay of councillors but not until after the next civic election.

The raise was one of 10recommendations made by an independent task forcethat council created to examine its pay earlier this year.

Council had voted in March to give itself an immediate raise, based on a study it had commissioned comparing remuneration between 18 Canadian cities but backed down after uproar from the public and a few dissenting council voices.

Instead it asked three community members to assess the report, and the councillors' workload, and then make recommendations on salary adjustments.

One key question was the amount of work involved.In Victoria, a councillor is considered a part-time job, but the March motion to raise pay was paired with a council decision to recognize their jobs as full time.

The task force made up of former city councillor and former remuneration adviser Margaret Lucas, former union president Stephanie Smithand Victoria Native Friendship Centre executive director Ron Rice said it could not determine whether the job is more part time or full time.

But, it said, it could agree that council members are not adequately compensated.

Its recommendations includethat council remuneration be set at 45 per cent of the mayor's salary, starting after the next municipal election in 2026.

It recommended the mayor's salary be set in the last year of a term, aligned with mayor salaries in other Canadian capital cities.

Other recommendations addressed annual allowances for travel, training and education; extra pay for councillors when they are acting as deputy mayor; and the exploration of flat rate per diems and improvements to health and wellness benefits.

Council voted on each of the 10recommendations separately.

All were approved some unanimously, others with a few votes in opposition.

Mayor and council will see one extra pay bump this year: it gets annual salary adjustments pegged to inflation, but the 2021 increase was cancelled due to COVID.

The task force recommended the 2021 adjustment be made retroactively to Jan.1, 2024.

That will set remuneration at $53,259 annually for councillorsand $133,147 for the mayor.