A City Councillor’s Wages
How much do we pay City Councillors and is it enough to attract a strong slate of candidate choices in elections?
The following arrived in my inbox this morning.
A registered candidate for the City Councillor elections sent me (and others) this message….
Every Candidate running in the Fall Municipal Elections needs to donate 50% of their Salary to charities or Organizations that help people & Children in your Community!
Nobody deserves the outrageous amount of Tax Payers money paid to a ward Councillor! For what??? Most people run because of the money. This is supposed to be a Position to give back to your Community, to make it Better!
Stop being so DAMN GREEDY. You’re not worth $40,000.00 to $ 60,000.00 for 3 meetings a month!
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My reply.
Good morning, Thank you for your message.
I applaud your desire to give to the needy. It is solely your decision to do whatever you like with your money.
If you are elected to Ward 3, I hope that you will keep your decision to yourself as to how you spend your salary. It’s no one’s business but yours as to how much of your earnings you give to charities. I trust that you will respect the same privacy for all of the other Councillors who win their elections.
My Life Lens as a former Recruiter
I was a professional recruiter for 36 years and have interviewed over 10,000 job candidates. The expression “you get what you pay for” rings true in all job markets, albeit not perfectly. As a City resident, I am less concerned about the size of my councillor’s paycheque and more interested in his or her abilities to serve my interests as a taxpayer.
I have never held the job of City Councillor.
Attending 3 meetings a month is not the entire job. Each new Councillor will face a learning curve - one that cannot be acquired from taking courses, reading books or watching videos. It will take time to learn about the key issues in a ward by meeting many ward residents. It will also take time to understand the various City departments, the services they provide, how they operate and by whom. I don’t doubt that there is lots of room for improvement. It’s these improvements that I am paying for as a taxpayer, not simply my Councillor’s attendance record to 3 meetings per month.
Give me more candidates to consider.
As a Ward 3 resident, it is my hope that the next Councillor will live up to “you get what you pay for” in the most positive sense of the phrase. As a former recruiter, I was used to having many candidates from which to choose for each job. The fact that there are so few candidates for the 8 City Councillor positions is telling. If those jobs and compensation were so attractive, why are so few candidates applying?
Please note that the Councillor’s salary is about the same as what a new University graduate in Engineering or Computer Science can expect from their first employer. Many will earn six figures after eight years of working experience.
I understand that a university degree is no guarantee of job performance in the public sector. However, as a voter, I would prefer to see a broader slate of candidates including some that are younger and better-educated candidates.
Zachary Tisdale (Ward 7) fits the profile. https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachary-tisdale-bmath-fcip-aida-89130926
Zachary holds a B. Mathematics degree. He lives and works in Lindsay as a Data Analytics specialist for an insurance company. Mr. Tisdale is under 40 years old, married and has 2 children attending elementary school. He is the only Councillor candidate who fits the profile of a mid-career family man who works with Information Technology. We live in an era when IT is having an enormous impact on all of our lives. This will accelerate over the next decade and people like Zach will understand it better than most.
I worked in the Information Technology field between 1977 and 2018. This fact had had a major impact on how I view our economy, culture and the role of governments in society. It would sure be nice to see more candidates like Zachary on City Council so that all future Council decisions will be considered through the lens of his kind of skills and knowledge.
Good luck in your race.
