One councillor’s push to have council positions made full-time is struggling for support at City Hall.
Ward 1’s Michael van Holst put forward a letter at the Corporate Services Committee asking for the switch, saying councillors would be better able to serve Londoners if they didn’t also have other jobs.
“When I’m dealing with challenges like, let’s say I want to renovate a bathroom. Well, if I take a week off work I can finish the whole thing and get it done in that week. If I want to try to do it in the evenings after work, then it’s going to drag out for months.”
Councillor and committee chair Josh Morgan took issue with suggestions that if councillors don’t have other jobs, they can focus more on their council duties.
“Whether it’s a job, whether it’s family, whether it’s other things, we all have other commitments in our lives and we devote the amount of time to this job that we can and that is appropriate to serve our constituents to the level that we feel we should serve them,” he said.
“I remind people that I got 75 per cent of the vote last time while maintaining two jobs. My constituents seem very happy with the service they’re getting and I’ll continue to serve them to the best of my ability.”
Van Holst also argued that designating the councillor position as full-time would provide for efficiencies and new opportunities.
“Imagine this situation: we meet as a committee of the whole Monday afternoon. Monday evening we have public participation meetings, Tuesday morning we meet and finish off as a committee of the whole and Tuesday evening we meet as council.”
Councillor Jesse Helmer said he believes the real issue is about the meetings schedule, which currently involves many meetings running into the evening hours. He also noted that councillor compensation is currently in line with the median full-time income for Londoners.
Morgan added that councillors basically work full-time hours already.
“What is the consequence of declaring that? There is literally none,” he said.
“Unless you’re looking to change the compensation rate, in which case, just have a discussion about the compensation rate, rather than talk about this full-time part-time thing. It stopped being part-time a long time ago.”
Councillor Paul van Meerbergen said he felt like councillors have spent a lot of time talking about themselves recently.
“We’ve just gone through the whole pay raise debate and so on. To my understanding, there is really no way to adjudicate full-time, what is full-time,” he said.
“The bottom line is another pay hike. This is another way to rationale more money for councillors. I don’t want to engage in this.”
Members of the Corporate Services Committee voted 4-2 to receive the letter from van Holst for information and to take no other action.
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