School board trustees gave themselves a raise of 8.08 per cent retroactive to Jan. 1, 2016 and future annual increases in line with the consumer price index (CPI) during their Feb. 9 school board meeting.
The motion came from a trustee honorarium ad-hoc committee made up of trustees Pammila Ruth, Dave Mewhort and Lori Pratt, as well as secretary-treasurer Nicholas Weswick and superintendent of schools Patrick Bocking.
Ruth, who chaired the committee, admitted that having trustees recommend their own raise was “awkward,” but that trustees hadn’t received an increase since 2010.
“We kind of discussed the difference throughout the province and after we crunched the numbers – and by we, I mean Dave [Mewhort] and Nick [Weswick] – we did find that we were below average as far as stipends went. And as we felt that we are a forward-thinking board, we are an innovative and collaborative board, we felt that we should be at least at par with the provincial average,” Ruth said.
“As this is definitely an awkward situation where you’re basically giving yourself a raise, we felt that from here forward we would align ourselves with the Vancouver CPI with periodic review just to make sure that everything was kind of aligned.”
Trustee Greg Russell noted that for the size of school district local trustees serve, the current rate of stipend was actually “above average of similar-sized districts,” although below the provincial average.
He also said he was unsure why the ad-hoc committee looked at stipends from local municipalities when making the decision to up the rate of trustee pay, “because they are a different form of governance,” he said.
Ruth explained that some school boards in the province use the same formula as municipalities to derive stipend amounts.
Trustee Lori Dixon, back from a long absence due to illness, said she was uncomfortable approving a raise for herself when other school district employee groups are awaiting raises of their own.
“What we do is important, but so is what everyone else does – and I’m thinking that maybe we should look at increasing our compensation when we’ve done our job and increases for everyone else have been taken care of. I know there are some sections of School District No. 46 (SD46) that have been waiting a long time for increases,” Dixon said. “Once everyone’s caught up, I think then we should get our increase.”
Trustee Christine Younghusband noted that employee groups in SD46 have a mechanism to seek wage increases.
“Our employee groups, they bargain, they have a process to get a wage increase. This is our process as a board,” she said.
Board chair Betty Baxter assured Dixon that, in her absence at the board table, employee groups had been given wage increases.
“Since your leave of absence certainly all of our employee groups, with the exception of, I believe, a very, very tiny anomaly, have received increases since 2010,” Baxter said.
The assurance wasn’t enough to sway Dixon, and when the question was called, all but she and Russell were in favour of approving a retroactive trustee wage increase of 8.08 per cent, with future annual increases equal to the rate of the Vancouver CPI.
The same 8.08 per cent increase will also be applied to current chair and vice chair positions.
With the increase, SD46 trustees now make $14,388.69 per year, the vice chair makes $16,009.89 and the chair makes $18,274.17.
