Mayor and city councillors score a 2.1% raise

torontosun.com
By Sue-Ann Levy
Feb. 1, 2017

After failing to deliver on the contracting out of garbage collection in Scarborough at council Tuesday, Toronto’s 44 councillors and the mayor are poised to collect a 2.1% salary hike this year.

And that increase - which will increase the amount councillors are paid annually to $111,955 in 2017 - comes despite hearing repeatedly in recent months about this year’s budget pressures and the need to make tough choices to reduce the $90-million deficit.

(At a Jan. 24 budget committee, those tough choices involved adding back some $29-million in service reductions and 58 city staff. That will be the subject of an upcoming column.)

Deputy city clerk Winnie Li confirmed the 2.1% increase Wednesday - one that is based on the Consumer Price Index. She said that increase will apply equally to councillor office budgets, taking them up to $32,732.83.

Mayor John Tory will earn $188,544 in 2017.

The 2017 increase, retroactive to Jan. 1 and to be approved as part of this year’s operating budget when it comes to council this month, means councillors will be earning 18% more than 10 years ago, when their salary was $95,000.

The only year their salary was frozen - at $99,619 - was in 2011 under budget chief Mike Del Grande.

If councillors keep this up, they will soon be making as much as Ontario MPPs whose base salary of $116,550 is frozen until 2019.

In the many years I’ve observed City Hall, two things are forever predictable: Councillors believe they work really, really hard and they always take care of themselves first.

But let’s be honest. How many of these councillors - Pam McConnell, Janet Davis, Paula Fletcher, Ana Bailao, Ron Moeser, Shelley Carroll, Mary Fragedakis, Maria Augimeri to name just a few - would ever make this kind of money if they had to compete for a job in the real world?

To add insult to injury, because most of them refuse to even discuss term limits, these have become virtual jobs for life. It has been near impossible to toss out lifers like McConnell, John Filion or Augimeri because they use the spoils of their office and capitalize on their name recognition to win time after time.

But there is at least one ray of hope in what I will call the 2017 Spendaholics Budget.

The $20.9-million council operating budget has been reduced 2.6% or by $543-million in line with the edict given by Tory to all city departments this year.

Cellphone roaming expenses - first proposed by former councillor and now Liberal MP Adam Vaughan - will no longer be covered by council’s general expense budget of more than $1 million. Councillors, poor dears, will now have to use their office budgets to cover that cost.

Councillors will no longer be able to expense a self-promotional newsletter either (which runs from $2,000 to $4,000 and was Filion’s idea) under that $1-million council slush fund.

Li says that is all subject to council approval (and, my word, we know how councillors like to take care of themselves.)

Councillors also had $232,175 in 2016, excluding benefits, to staff their offices and could dip into a separate business travel budget of $60,000, both of which remain intact.