Committee recommends pay bump for next year's Windsor councillors

A committee reviewing Windsor city council compensation is recommending that councillors get a pay bump starting next year. 

The Council Compensation Review Committee is advising that councillors get about a $5,100 salary increase starting next term, which would bring their annual income to $52,000. 

The group also recommended that the position of mayor receive the standard one per cent increase for non-union members over the next electoral period starting in 2023

The committee presented these recommendations during a Zoom call Tuesday. 

Chair of the committee Vincent Georgie called the process the group undertook to make these recommendations as "deliberate, slow, unrushed and very considered." 

Georgie said the committee is advising a councillor pay increase due to "several considerations," specifically the number of hours councillors were working. Council members, aside from the Mayor, are currently considered part-time. 

"There were varying degrees of the amount of time necessary for each councillor to fulfil their duties, but it was quite clear that in many cases you had people that were absolutely breaching full time work or full time hours," Georgie said, noting some worked anywhere from 25 hours to 60 hours a week. 

As for whether COVID-19 played a role in this, Georgie said it didn't have a "significant" impact on the amount of work council members were putting in. 

He also said they chose the increase as they thought it accurately reflected what the role required of people and hoped it would "encourage and inspire" a diversity of candidates. 

The Council Compensation Review Committee was assembled in October 2021 and includes Georgie, along with Frazier Fathers, who is an independent research consultant, and Mila Lucio, who is the executive vice-president of human resources and social impact at Green Shield Canada. 

The committee said it performed interviews with all members of council, including the Mayor, held two virtual public consultations and sent out an online survey to get an understanding of what salaries should look like for council members starting next term. 

In addition to its process, it also hired third party consulting service Gallagher Benefit Services (Canada) Group Inc. to put together a report that compares Windsor's council compensation with other cities. 

According to city administration, Gallagher's services cost the municipality about $20,000. 

The committee's report stressed that since its formation and start date was delayed by two years due to COVID-19, future committees should be formed sooner and look more in-depth at several factors, including: