Around this time each year, as is required by Section 284 of Ontario’s Municipal Act, this week the municipality released a report that outlines the remuneration received by our seven members of council last year.
While you might hear some folks suggest that council members should cut their pay in order to reduce taxes, the reality is that you could completely eliminate council’s pay completely and you wouldn’t notice it a bit on your tax bill.
Total cost to Meaford ratepayers for all seven members of council in 2024, including sundry expenses for things like conference attendance, travel expenses, or training, was $235,115.
With a total tax-supported levy of $18.4 million in 2024, the $235,115 paid to our seven members of council inclusive of taxable remuneration, expenses, and taxable life insurance benefits, amounts to just 1.3 percent of the tax-supported levy. Small town councils are often the cheapest boards of directors you will find; municipalities are corporations after all.
Last year our mayor earned $48,292.80 taxable remuneration plus $914 sundry expenses, while our deputy mayor earned $32,656.08 plus $4,788.91 sundry expenses.
For the five regular members of council the annual salary is $26,061.24. The sundry expenses for the five regular members of council in 2024 ranged from $2,445.90 (Bartley) to $5,177.54 (Greenfield).
So I do chuckle from time to time when I hear or read that council should cut their pay in order to reduce taxes, or that councillors are overpaid, particularly given the number of hours that they put in each year. You don’t have to like or agree with members of council on issues, but you can’t, with a straight face at least, claim that they are overpaid.
Though it might officially be a part-time job, a member of council puts in a lot of hours reading through hundreds of pages of reports each week, attending numerous meetings, and fielding endless email messages and phone calls. For many members of council it amounts to a full time job, or close to it, but is it worth it for these members of council, who receive just $26,061.24 in remuneration for a regular council member?
As I like to ask each year, would you do the job for a little over $26,000 per year? I know many wouldn’t, but thankfully, some are willing.
As I mention in our print newspaper this week, we put a lot of trust and faith into our municipal councillors, who are tasked with representing ratepayers and making decisions that are in the best interest of our municipality. And while most council business is pretty hum-drum and fairly standard, from time to time a major issue can add challenges for councillors, but those challenges can most often be easily met. Once in a blue moon, an out-of-the-ordinary and massive challenge can be dropped in council’s lap, like a multi-billion dollar hydro-electric pumped storage proposal, and then life as a small town councillor becomes anything but ordinary. With the proposed multi-billion dollar hydro-electric pumped storage facility to be built on our local military base, this community is currently in a blue moon phase, and we will be in this phase for some years to come, particularly if the project ultimately moves forward.
The pumped storage proposal would be an enormous challenge for any municipal council, but it is particularly challenging for a rural, small-town council, whose greatest pressures are typically things like roads and bridges, or aging facilities.
It’s a tough job for the pay indeed. While the pumped storage proposal has taken up much space in this community for the past five years, our council has other major challenges ahead of them, challenges that without doubt keep some councillors awake at night.
The pending expansion of the municipal wastewater plant, for example, is certainly enough to keep any councillor up at night. The most recent projection of the cost for the expansion was roughly $120 million. The expansion is considered necessary because the wastewater treatment plant is quickly running out of capacity, and without increasing the wastewater treatment capacity, this municipality will be unable to grow in the urban area. Some of course would, and have, argued that we shouldn’t be chasing growth, and so the capacity of the wastewater treatment plant is fine just as it is, so why spend $120 million for an expansion? You would need to see a significant amount of growth in order to see any return on a $120 million investment.
For perspective, the entire tax supported operating and capital budgets for 2025 total just shy of $20 million, so the cost of that one project is the equivalent of the cost of running this municipality for six whole years. Where the funding will come from, nobody knows at this point, as there has been no indication that help will be coming from upper levels of government.
Such are the challenges that our municipal council must grapple with.
I am thankful that we have folks in this community who every four years are willing to toss their name into the ring at municipal election time. I don’t have to agree with everything council does in order to respect the massive responsibility that they take on in exchange for relatively little pay.
It can be easy to forget that the seven members of our council are just regular people, who, before running for and winning a seat at the horseshoe, were simply our friends and neighbours, just regular citizens, ordinary ratepayers, some with current jobs, others retired, but all with a love of their community. Before taking a seat at the council table these seven citizens were folks we would perhaps bump into at local events, or they were neighbours with whom we would chat after cutting the lawn. So I am thankful, even when I disagree with them, that these seven citizens were willing to give up the relative tranquility of normal, everyday life in exchange for the at times chaotic life of a small town councillor.
They take on the role of councillor knowing that their evenings will often be filled with angry phone calls or email messages from residents frustrated with issues big and small. They take on the role knowing that a simple trip to the grocery store can turn into an hours-long ordeal after being cornered by one resident after another to talk about local issues.
The job of an elected member of a municipal council is not easy, and it is not well paid, but for those who are built for it, serving on council can be a rewarding (though often frustrating) experience.
