An attempt by Mayor Amarjeet Sohi to cut his salary so that it equals the compensation received by Calgary’s mayor was voted down by Edmonton city council on Thursday as several councillors expressed the need for lawmakers not to play a role in deciding their own pay.
“That motion, if passed, would have been setting his own salary,” Coun. Andrew Knack noted. “And we have purposely designed a process to not set our own salaries.”
Knack was one of seven city councillors who voted against the motion. Five councillors voted in support of it.
The reason Sohi earns more per year than Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek is because while both city councils froze their salaries during part of the COVID-19 pandemic, Calgary salaries had been frozen for an extra year.
The salary for Edmonton’s mayor and city council is recommended by the independent council compensation committee so that city council is not tasked with setting salaries. A vote was held on the committee’s latest salary recommendations on Thursday but the next review is not expected to occur until 2032.
“I worry that an eight-year time frame is quite long and the gap (between the salaries of Edmonton and Calgary’s mayors) will continue to grow and this question will continue to linger,” Sohi said.
After being presented with the committee’s report, city council voted 11-1 in favour of moving forward with its recommended increases. The base salary for Edmonton’s mayor will go from $216,585 in 2024 to $223,093 in 2025 while the base salaries for city councillors will go from $122,363 to $126,034.
The vote came as city council faces ongoing financial pressures and tries to mitigate property tax increases. Coun. Aaron Paquette was the only one to vote against the salary increases, something he told Global News he planned to do a day earlier.
“For council compensation, if council wants to show leadership, I believe that they should freeze their compensation this year,” Paquette said on Wednesday.
It was almost a year ago that city council passed a bylaw to establish a temporary independent council compensation committee to conduct a comprehensive review of compensation for members of city council.
To put together its report, the committee took part in discussions about compensation, reviewed statistical data on compensation and compared it with lawmakers in other municipalities and at other levels of government and surveyed the public on the matter.
The report notes the committee was asked to ensure compensation is appropriate “to attract a diverse range of candidates,” looks at hours put in at work by members of city council, that salaries are comparable to those in other jurisdictions and to make its recommendations “reasonable in light of economic circumstances and the city’s objectives and financial constraints.”
“Overall, the City of Edmonton has adopted a conservative approach to compensation increases in recent years, mindful of economic pressures while ensuring the remuneration remains competitive and fair,” the report says.
“Reviews are generally conducted every two council terms, with this 2024 review being an interim review undertaken because of the exceptional circumstances in 2020.”
The committee also looked at factors like salary trends, inflation and cost-of-living adjustments, as well as Statistics Canada data on average weekly earnings in Alberta.
“In Alberta this indicator has seen moderate growth in recent years, with recent salary adjustments reflecting the regional economic recovery post-pandemic,” the committee’s report says.
Knack said he believes not accepting the report’s recommendations would have been problematic.
“That would have changed the process, which is meant to be independent, which is meant to help give confidence to the public that we are not going to start getting involved in a process depending on which why the political winds are blowing,” he said.
–With files from Global News’ Jaclyn Kucey