Higher wages recommended for Charlottetown council

A commission is recommending higher salaries for Charlottetown city councillors following the removal of a federal tax exemption.

The city's Remuneration and Allowances Commission for Elected Officials presented its report on Tuesday night at a special meeting of council.

The commission began its work last June to independently review the compensation and allowances of city council and then provide recommendations.

According to itsreport,the federal exemption was eliminated in January of 2019after being in effect for almost 70years.

Gerard Mitchell, chair of the commission, said whenthe tax exemption was eliminated, mayors and municipal councillors tooka "big-hit" to their take-home pay.

In 2019the mayor lost about $10,000, the deputy mayor about $4,400 and city councillorsjust under $4,000, he said.

"Our city councillors work very hard and they'revery busy and this takes a lot of time from their families," said Mitchell.

"We're trying to help out by giving them partial compensation by what they lost as a result of the federal governmentdoing away with the exemption," he said.

These were the salaries for 2019:

• Mayor: $70,899.
• Deputy mayor: $38,697.
• Councillor: $35,449.

A remuneration bylaw passed first reading on Tuesday night, despite three councillors voting against it.

Coun.Julie McCabe saidshe was concerned about what the public's perception would be.

"I wanted to make sure that the public was aware that this is not an actual raise for the council," said McCabe.

"This was money that they had lost when the federal government had taken the tax redemption away and to be clear, it's a partial recovery for those councillors that experienced that loss."

The bylaw will go to second readingatnext week's council meeting.

If it'seventually passed,the commissionsuggested these salary increases, which would all be fully taxed.:

• Mayor: $4,000.
• Deputy mayor: $3,300.
• Councillor: $3,000.

Mitchell said they came up with these numbers by comparing salarieswith other municipalitiesin the Maritimes.

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