"I want to state for the record that council and the mayor are not getting raises."
Lac La Biche County Mayor Paul Reutov interrupted budget 2022 discussions about salaries during Tuesday afternoon's council meeting to debunk social media comments and criticism he's received since last week's Lakelandtoday.ca article was published about wage increases for municipal staff.
Although the article clearly states the pay increases over the next two years are for municipal staff and not elected officials, Reutov said he's been getting negative publicity from residents who misunderstood the information. He's also had comments from people who thought the change in his pay structure, approved by council last week, meant he was getting a raise.
The move to a $110,000 a year salaried position, away from the previous combination of base salary plus per-meeting honorarium, didn't give him more money, the mayor said, explaining — as the original article also does — that the new salary is based on the last three years of pay to the mayor's position.
In 2020, the combined salary, honorarium and benefits paid to the previous mayor's position was $120,600. In 2019 it was $118,000 and $106,000 in 2018.
"It's those things that the public don't understand sometimes"
- Deputy Mayor Lorin Tkachuk on information about municipal wages
The new mayor says the blow-back he's been receiving is unwarranted.
"I just want to put that in black and white, so I don't want to get any more social media posts or misrepresenting in whatever posting there is," said Reutov who stated throughout his recent campaign to become the mayor that he wasn't running for the money, and preferred community growth to a paycheck.
Salary limit
A new way to look at that new paycheck, says Ken Van Buul, the municipal CAO at the time of the discussion, is that it now has a set ceiling — which is a good thing.
"There's another way that you can frame this, and that's that the mayor's salary has now been capped — whereas before, the mayor's salary could've actually been higher than that, depending on what meetings the mayor would go to and what meetings the mayor would claim," said Van Buul. "I think there's a different narrative here that could have been used and that is that we've capped the salary."
Deputy Mayor Lorin Tkachuk said he and other council members have also heard comments from the public over the last week. He also emphasized what the original article also stated — that the recommended pay increases for staff came from a contracted consultant's independent review of the compensation for county employees and council.
Tkachuk said along with no increases for elected officials, they will also not be taking the 1.3 per cent cost-of-living-increases (COLA) that staff will also receive.
"So not only is there no increases, there's no COLA proposed," said Tkachuk. "It's those things that the public don't understand sometimes."
