A citizen advisory committee is recommending Calgary’s mayor take a pay cut, and Naheed Nenshi says he’s fine with it.
The committee says the mayor should take a six per cent pay cut to earn $200,747 a year. The advisory group says councillors’ salaries should not be changed.
Nenshi said he has always believed the mayor’s compensation was too rich and that, in part, is why he donates 10 per cent of his salary to charity each year.
“I’m totally fine with it. In fact, I’ve been saying for some years that the previous citizen committee, I thought, had pegged the mayor’s salary too high. But, I also wanted to respect that it’s a volunteer committee and councillors shouldn’t set their own salaries up or down,” Nenshi said.
For that reason, the mayor does not agree with the committee’s recommendation that council vote each year on its pay package.
“It ends up then being political and it undermines the work of the citizen volunteer community, in my opinion. I think if the committee is confident in their recommendations, and they are, then they shouldn’t need that extra political check from council.”
The committee says council should retain Statistics Canada’s Alberta average weekly earnings as the basis for setting its pay.
Calgary is different from many other municipalities because the pay council receives is fully taxable. Many other municipal governments in the country allow for one-third of the compensation to be tax free.
The report goes to city council on Monday.
With files from Aurelio Perri
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