We would suggest a lower threshold, namely, what an MLA takes home.
City councillors in Greater Vancouver have drawn attention to the outrageous salaries being paid to some mayors.
According to Kash Heed, a Richmond councillor, the city’s mayor, Malcolm Brodie, took home nearly $380,000 in 2024.
And New Westminster Coun. Daniel Fontaine has pointed out that several regional mayors earn more than provincial cabinet ministers.
In 2023, Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley pocketed $235,000. That same year, Delta Mayor George Harvey was paid $201,000, and Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West made $201,688.
Some of those mayors may point out that they perform multiple functions.
So do provincial cabinet ministers, yet in 2024 their salary stood at $180,000, well below some of those mayoral wage packages. The difference becomes indefensible when job responsibilities are compared.
The mayor of Richmond manages an operating budget of $1.9 billion. The province’s health minister is responsible for an operating budget of $35 billion — nearly 20 times the Richmond total.
The overpayments don’t stop in Vancouver.
Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto took home $130,620 last year.
And Saanich Mayor Dean Murdock will be paid $151,339 this year, close to a provincial minister’s pay.
It’s not only mayors who are living high on the hog. Richmond’s chief administrator took home a whopping $582,240 in salary and benefits in 2024.
That’s more than the prime minister receives.
Victoria’s chief administrator received $313,619 in pay and benefits last year. Those earnings are comparable to the amounts paid to provincial deputy ministers, several of whom manage organizations many times larger in size and complexity.
Indeed, the city has 100 workers who make $100,000 or more, plus 126 managers who make more than the $119,500 an MLA gets. Some of those managers earn more than a provincial minister.
Perhaps it was some of those managers who came up with the ill-advised scheme to “revitalize” Centennial Square, greatly against community wishes.
Last year the chief administrator at Saanich made $309,448, while 57 workers earned $100,000 or more, plus 65 managers who were paid more than an MLA, in some cases more than a provincial minister.
Possibly some of those managers dreamt up the ridiculous plan to block two of the four lanes on McKenzie Avenue, ensuring a traffic snarl of epic proportions and infuriating local residents.
It’s telling how these outrageous salaries were arrived at. Municipalities go looking for “equivalent” jurisdictions elsewhere and adopt their salary scheme.
Frequently, these just happen to be municipalities toward the high end of the wage scale. What ensues then is a game of leapfrog, with no regard for reality.
The accounting firm Deloitte recently suggested a policy for managing local government salary scales. What’s needed, the company wrote, is a maximum remuneration cap for total income not exceeding what a provincial cabinet minister is paid.
We would suggest a lower threshold, namely, what an MLA takes home.
For it’s a hard fact of life that around 85 per cent of a municipal operating budget goes for employee pay and benefits. If staff are overpaid, the budget is forced up.
And that is what’s happened at municipalities across the province. The results are there for all to see.
For several years, local governments have been hiking property taxes at levels well above inflation, indeed in many cases several times the rate of inflation.
While invariably these increases have been justified as necessary for improved services, in reality, a considerable portion goes to sustain lavish wage scales.
The provincial government is currently asking ministries and health authorities to trim overhead and cut staff.
The time has come to demand the same of municipalities.
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