Would Higher Salaries Attract Better City Councillors?

It was a nice Friday in May of 2021, near the end of my second term as city councillor. The Utility Committee had wrapped up before lunch, so I called a friend I’d been promising to take out on my new canoe. A perfect afternoon to shift from the River Valley Room to the actual river valley.

As we loaded the canoe at Laurier Park, a guy coming off the river with his paddle board recognized me. He set his board down and performatively checked his watch.

“It’s a little early to be starting the weekend, isn’t it, Councillor?”

I told him — yeah, maybe it was early, but if he shared his number, I’d call him when I got home at 9 or 10 p.m. from an evening event. Or after a Saturday spent at community events and retirement dinners. Or early Sunday mornings when I caught up on reading for the week ahead. “That way,” I said, “you can feel better about me sitting in my canoe on a Friday afternoon.”

Obviously, I’d already decided not to run again, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have been so happy to light him up. But truth be told, my indignation had been simmering for years.

Even before my political career, I’ve found the outrage over politicians’ salaries unfair and offside with the reality of public service. It’s a thankless job. People love to beat up on politicians. Some deserve it. Most don’t.

Whether you align with them ideologically or not isn’t the point. Life for elected officials, particularly municipal ones in big cities, is demanding. They work long days and most weekends, representing wards of around 100,000 people. They must learn a lot about many things quickly. In Edmonton, with about 70 lines of business, that’s a steep curve.

It’s not brain surgery, but it isn’t simply middle management either. It requires sophisticated interpersonal, critical and organizational skill — and relentless effort — qualities never adequately valued by salaries of $126,000. In a city where senior organizational leaders can make well over $200,000 a year, it’s no wonder many folks qualified to serve on city council won’t ever consider it. If we want to attract people willing to make that effort, we must pay up.

How did it get this way?

In Edmonton, we’ve outsourced salary-setting to an independent panel to avoid the optics of politicians setting their own pay.

Public service of this nature has high value. If we want highly qualified, experienced people in these roles, we need to pay them accordingly.

Being a councillor shouldn’t be the best job ever. But it should inspire timely and meaningful public service rather than ongoing self preservation.

We need to appeal to people from business, experienced non-profit leaders, arts organizations, and the trades — people willing to disrupt their careers for the good of their city. That means offering more than middle management salaries.

Edmonton’s annual budget is close to $4 billion. The city has billions more in capital assets requiring informed oversight. Yet, we expect council to perform at a C-suite level for a middle-management compensation.

I believe a more balanced, professionally diverse council leads to better governance. Higher pay would help attract experienced professionals, reducing the likelihood of “career politicians” — those who know how to campaign but lack the experience to govern beyond their own activism.

As for the Mayor’s salary, currently set at $223,000, it should align more closely with the City Manager’s salary of roughly $300,000. Although the City Manager oversees 14,000 employees and the Mayor technically has only two (one of whom is, in fact, the higher-paid city manager), the political and public pressures on the Mayor are more immense and intense. Mayors of big cities have the same legislative power as a councillor but absorb exponentially more scrutiny. They must also manage relationships with senior, always better-paid, leaders — police chiefs, Utility CEOs, board chairs, post-secondary presidents, premiers, and federal ministers. Sure, their city managers must also engage many of these same people, but at the end of the day, they’re simply making recommendations to the Mayor and Council who bear the blessed burden of very public decision making.

I can admit I didn’t feel this strongly about it while on Council. We used to joke at midnight during never-ending public hearings that it was too bad we didn’t get paid hourly. But looking back, and hearing people wish for a greater diversity of senior leadership experience among council candidates, I know that unless we pay up, most won’t step up.

Because why step away from a job that likely pays them what they’re worth.

Michael Walters is a partner at Berlin Communications, and a former Edmonton city councillor.