OLDS — A motion that a cost of living adjustment (COLA) would not be provided to town council members was defeated during council’s Dec. 13 meeting.
A 2.33 per cent COLA for town staff was approved in the municipality's budget. It also applied to town councillors as per policy.
Coun. Heather Ryan made the motion to not grant the COLA to council members. She conceded that at about $4,000, that wouldn’t cut much money out of the budget.
“It’s not a huge amount of money. I just think it’s the principle of the thing, the leadership that we can show by doing this and saying, you know, council is not taking a raise at this point,” Ryan said.
Coun. Darren Wilson supported that idea saying whether it’s leadership or not, a decision not to extend the COLA to councillors would demonstrate “some fiscal prudence and responsibility” even though he too agreed the amount of money involved is small.
Wilson said he had examined the total compensation package that Olds town councillors receive compared to those in similar-sized communities and determined that Olds town councillors are” “from a total compensation perspective, very well compensated.”
“Now again I’m saying that’s total compensation, so all honouraria, all salary and everything else and allowances. But out of nine municipalities I looked at, Olds town councillors received the most compensation, based on 2020," Wilson said.
On the other hand, Coun. James Cummings supported a COLA for council.
“It’s a cost of living adjustment, not a raise,” Cummings said. “I know sometimes it’s perceived by our constituents as a raise. It's not. The raises are done on behalf of council every four years through the renumeration policy set forth by this province.
“So this is a cost of living adjustment. We’ve seen how inflation is affecting everybody and it’s going to get worse and worse and worse.”
Cummings questioned the idea of viewing rejection of the COLA as being a demonstration of leadership.
“Leadership means that someone’s following. If we’re providing leadership, who’s following by also not accepting COLA?" Cummings asked.
“If we were to not accept COLA and lead by example, that would be us turning to our staff saying ‘you also should not get COLA because we’re leading by example. We’re not receiving COLA so you should not as well.”
Yet, he noted council had agreed that Town staff should receive the COLA.
“I find that the only justifiable reason for refusing COLA for council is a political decision and optics, not the reality of the financial situation,” he said.
Mayor Judy Dahl asked if council didn’t accept a COLA this year, would it later have to play ‘catch-up’ by receiving an even larger one in future years.
Chief administrative officer Michael Merritt said it is true that when council remuneration is looked at – generally in the third year of a four-year term -- the recommendation is usually to catch up if it’s deemed council compensation is falling behind that provided by other similar communities.
That seemed to fit with Dahl’s view.
"I firmly believe that the optics are worse for us in the future. I’ve dealt with many councils in the past where you hold, hold, hold," Dahl said. “But you know what? At the end of the day, you end up getting a large bill, so I think it is optics as well.”
Cummings agreed with that thinking.
He noted he sat on the remuneration committee last year.
“Whether we do it every year with council through COLA or whether we do it once every four years, the number’s still going to increase. That’s mathematics, I guess; that’s almost a given,” he said.
“So just taking COLA out is an optics issue, it’s not a financial issue.”
Blatz agreed with Cummings.
She also pointed out that during the last remuneration study, it was decided not to increase the honouraria Olds council members receive.
“So that means for the next four years, we will not have any increase when many of the municipalities around us actually did increase their honouraria," she said.
“And I think that showed a great deal of leadership at that point in time due to the economics of our community and the surrounding area that we did not, when we could have, actually increase our remuneration at that time.
“So to accept a small cost of living increase, as councillor Cummings has indicated, is just the cost of living. And everything else is going up around us and we are also too faced with the increased cost of living."
Coun. Harvey Walsh said if council wanted to demonstrate fiscal prudence, it could look at cutting the number of meetings it holds. He noted they held a lot of meetings in the last month or two.
Ryan indicated that’s because a lot of training was provided, due to the fact there are several new council members.
“I’m not going to quibble over what somebody believes is their definition of leadership – or optics. I'm not doing this for optics,” she said. “I’m doing this for exactly the reasons why Coun. Wilson had mentioned, is to show some kind of fiscal restraint a little bit.
“I know it’s not a lot of money, but I do think that it’s an opportunity for us to show a little bit of fiscal – I don’t know -- responsibility I guess, for what we’re spending taxpayers’ money on.”
