A councillor in Revelstoke resigned Tuesday, in protest over a hefty salary increase that his fellow councillors have agreed to give themselves.
The pay raise stems from a motion brought forward by Coun. Cody Younker in late 2019, to raise Mayor Gary Sulz's salary from $30,000 to $75,000 and councillor's salaries from $15,000 to $25,000. The raises are proposed to take place over the next three years, with a total hit of about $45,000 in the 2020 budget.
Near the end of Tuesday's council meeting, Coun. Steven Cross brought forth a motion to instead, divert the funds from those raises to much-needed infrastructure and road improvements in town.
“With the revenue hole, with the number of things that are facing us, we should maybe slow down this process,” he told his colleagues.
“I think that our community would really respect this and admire our leadership on this if we put the money that we already voted for ourselves, back into the budget we need to have.”
Cross' motion was met with just one supporter.
“This year we're facing a steep shortfall, and I really feel strongly that this year is not the year to do it,” Coun. Mike Brooks-Hill said.
“When we all ran for office, pretty much all of us said we wanted to work for a better community, none of us said we wanted to increase council salaries. This motion is talking about putting money into the community or giving money to ourselves, it's that simple.”
Coun. Rob Elliot spoke up against Cross' motion, noting that their wages are below similarly sized communities.
“We're not even in the ballpark, and we just want to be treated fairly for what the work is done,” he said.
Cross told Castanet he agreed the wages need to increase in the future, but he said the raises should be vetted by a third-party review and then shouldn't come into effect until the next council is voted in.
"We all got elected knowing what the pay was. Nobody spoke about pay issues when they ran in October 2018," Cross said. "If we feel it needs to be changed, we do it for the future councils, we put it in place for the next council."
Cross' motion was defeated, and as a result, he announced his resignation.
“Approving pay raises of 134 per cent for mayor and 67 per cent for councillors in a budget year where our town has a $500,000 revenue hole to deal with and our roads are a mess is a choice of self-interest over mission of service to our community. I can't support that,” Cross said.
“The choices made on these matters erodes the public’s faith and trust and I will not be a party to that practice. Nor can I continue to work with this group when self-interest is so clearly being chosen over the mission of service we were elected for.”
The raises won't become official until the 2020 budget is approved later this year. Cross hopes the public will voice their opinions on the raises during the public consultation period.
"I don't think my fellow councillors are bad people, but I do think they have a serious loss of sense of priority here on a mission of service to our community," Cross said.
