Prince Edward County Council has voted to defer a decision on a potential pay increase for council.
The topic of council remuneration was a subject of great debate during Tuesday’s council meeting.
Council considered a motion that both accepted the results of a third party review of council pay, and offered multiple options for adjusting pay to match the averages of communities the council was compared to.
The first option set council salary at the average of a broad group of comparable organizations, with the second option setting it to the average of 6 single tier municipalities that were compared. A third option would increase councillor’s salary to the minimum livable wage as calculated for the county, with a fourth option to leave compensation as is. All options besides leaving it as is represented a salary increase for council.
Council debated the options at length, with Councillor Brad Nieman in favour of leaving the pay structure as is, saying that being a councillor isn’t a full time job.
“If what I’m hearing is people are quitting their full time jobs to be on council, that’s an awful risk to take,” Said Councillor Nieman. “Because in four years you could be unemployed, period, so I’m quite positive nobody’s quitting full-time jobs to be on council.”
Councillor Kate MacNaughton pushed to increase council pay.
“If you run for council, if you’ve been successful, and you step away from your job to undertake this job for your community, which is a passion for everyone here, but still has to be something you know you can fund,” said Councillor MacNaughton.
Council voted first to keep pay the same, then for option two to increase to the average of single tier municipalities, with both failing on a 6-6 tie in recorded votes. Councillors Roy Pennell, Nieman, Phil Prinzen, David Harrisson, Corey Englesdorfer, and Chris Braney voted to keep pay the same, and the same councillors voted against the motion to increase pay.
Ultimately, council was unable to reach a consensus, and voted to defer the item to the next meeting of council.
