KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid. It’s advice that gets trotted out in all sorts of circumstances, and we think it’s advice the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) should follow on directors’ pay.
Roberts Creek director Mark Lebbell shared his T4 sticker shock at a recent committee meeting, saying his income didn’t come up to $20,000. He soon realized he’d misspoke, and didn’t include the tax-free portion of directors’ pay (noted in a different box on the T4) that was worth an additional $9,000.
That he didn’t already know – at least within few hundred dollars – what those numbers were going to be is down, in part, to the Byzantine method for calculating director remuneration. There’s pay for being a director. Pay for chairing or vice-chairing a committee. Pay for attending a meeting. Pay for sitting on the Regional Hosptial District (RHD) board. In all, “schedule A” of SCRD Bylaw 636 has seven columns (and five more for RHD) that have to be referred to come up with a director’s pay.
There were about a dozen fewer meetings in 2016 thanks to efforts to streamline management and the committee structure at the SCRD, which means all directors would have seen a drop in pay of around $1,400.
If there’s going to be a review of directors’ pay, let’s start by making it simple enough that the public, and directors, can do the arithmetic in their heads.
Full reporting on pay and expenses for municipal governments happens months after the year end in a Statement of Financial Information. In municipalities like Gibsons and Sechelt, people who want an idea of what the mayor and councillors are paid before then can check the relevant bylaw. SCRD residents have to check the bylaw, their director’s attendance record, whether they chair or vice chair a committee, and whip out their calculator.
Around 70 per cent of the people who responded to our Question of the Week think directors’ current pay is fair. But how many understand how that particular sausage is made?
Having a pay formula that’s easy to understand is essential, because the public ought to have a direct say on that pay.
The SCRD board is awaiting a report on “potential processes for a directors’ compensation review, including but not limited to working groups, qualified individuals, or citizen’s committees.”
If job one is to simplify the pay scale, job two needs to be getting public input.
When SCRD staff bring that report forward it has to include a mechanism like citizen committees, and serious thought should be given to making changes in director pay a plebiscite question on the 2018 ballot.
