Stouffville Free Press

In the end, after all the gnashing of teeth, a middle way was found.

At the council meeting on Jan. 24, council voted (five votes to two) in favour of awarding itself a pay raise of around 16 per cent for the mayor and 18.65 per cent for the councillors. The 43 per cent pay raise that was originally tabled was scaled back. Back in December I wrote that in the peculiar circumstances of this case 43 per cent was justified. I still stand by that.

The problem for council was that 43 per cent just made such an eye-catching figure, such a dramatic headline.

But all of this ignores the fact that, even with the originally proposed pay hikes the new salaries would still have been about average compared to those of neighbouring municipalities. Unfortunately for council, pay had been allowed to fall behind the market rate over the last four years and had also failed to keep pace with the extra work required in a rapidly growing town.

But it is a persistently held belief amongst much of the public that all politicians are ultimately self serving and the headlines triggered a backlash of sorts from the letter writing arm of the Sun/Tribune readership. Some pretty vitriolic letters began to make their way onto the letters page.

Even the Toronto Star got in on the act. Speaking of the originally proposed 43 per cent pay rise the Toronto Star wrote “it’s the kind of pay raise most people can only dream about.” True, but most of us earn more than $27,729 a year to begin with.

The 43 per cent figure also attracted the attention of the National Post whose headline ran “Hard times fail to keep politicians from trough.”

Even the new, reduced raise seems high when considered simply as a percentage. In the current economic climate we have been used to talk of pay freezes or small increases to keep pace with inflation.

Councillor Ferdinands, who voted against the new reduced increase (but in favour of the original motion to consider 43 per cent), said that council’s “credibility” had been undermined due to flaws in the pay review process.

Even if I am right in saying that a substantial pay raise was justified, Mr. Ferdinands may have a point in saying that the process could have been handled better. The credibility of politicians is something that needs to be protected to help bolster the public’s faith in the system.

When I spoke with Mayor Emmerson two days after the council meeting he told me he was “still feeling pretty beat up by the whole experience. It has carried on because the papers have got the numbers wrong.” Apparently the Toronto Star first wrote on its website that the original 43per cent raise had been approved before later correcting itself.

I still think though that council has been a little hard done by in all of this. The councillors’ salary for 2011 was $27,729. The 43 per cent rise would have taken them to about parity with their neighbours. Is asking for significant pay rise from $27,729 an act of “greed” as accused by former mayor Sue Sherban? I think not.

Another point in all of this is that much of the pay raise will not benefit this council but the councils of the future. The pay raise will not take full effect until 2013 and there will be an election in 2014. This was always part of the plan. Mayor Emmerson said in 2010 that he would not run again in 2014.

The mayor’s job already involves long hours and the workload of councillors gets heavier every year as the town grows, leaving less and less time for holding down another job. Should it be that in future only the independently wealthy or comfortably retired can afford to run for council?