Ten of Meaford’s municipal staff members received salaries in excess of $100,000 in 2023, earning them a spot on Ontario’s annual ‘Sunshine List’.
Each year organizations that receive public funding from the Province of Ontario must disclose the names, positions, salaries, and total taxable benefits of employees paid $100,000 or more in a calendar year; the compiled list is commonly referred to as the ‘sunshine list’.
In 1996 the Mike Harris Conservative government passed the Ontario Public Disclosure Act, which the government of the day suggested would offer transparency and highlight increasing spending on public sector payrolls.
The Municipality of Meaford had no employees earning enough to land them on the list until 2009, when former CAO Frank Miele became the first with a reported income of $118,000 in that year. In the years since, Meaford has had as many as ten employees make the list, and as few as three.
The original threshold of $100,000 to earn a spot on the annual Sunshine List has never been adjusted for inflation, which has resulted in an ever-growing number of public sector employees being included in the list each year. In the first year of the list’s publication it included just 4,756 public sector employees, while by 2020 more than 205,000 made it onto the list. This year’s (2023) Sunshine List includes more than 300,570 public sector employees.
Had the threshold been adjusted for inflation annually, public sector employees would today need to earn more than $175,000 in order to be included on the list.
Employees of the Municipality of Meaford to make the list in 2023 are as follows:
- Courtney Allen, Fire Chief – $106,091.72
- Robert Armstrong, Former CAO – $194,547.19
- Christoper Collyer, Manager/Chief Operator Environmental Services – $108,425.10
- Valerie Manning, Treasurer – $121,390.50
- Denise McCarl, Manager Planning Services – $100,188.20
- Victoria Perejmybida, Director of Infrastructure – $129,282.30
- Matt Smith, Clerk & Interim CAO – $148,335.60
- Bart Toby, Chief Building Official – $108,425.10
- Robert Voigt, Director of Development – $134,080.80
- Jessica Wiley, Director of Operations/Drainage Superintendant – $116,604.60
Additionally, the ten municipal employees also earned taxable benefits valued from $1,394 to $2,097.
The full database of Ontario’s public salary disclosure can be found by visiting:
https://www.ontario.ca/public-sector-salary-disclosure/2023/all-sectors-and-seconded-employees/
