Council costs 32 per cent more

New Tec council pay and expenses climbed 32 per cent in four years
NEW TECUMSETH – April 6 2010 Simcoe,com – New Tecumseth council members received $286,991 in payouts last year for their salary, benefits, mileage and other expenses. The expenses were made public at a recent council meeting. Since 2006, when council expenses were $217,360, remunerations have increased $69,631.
The base salary for councillors is $19,380. For the deputy mayor position the base salary is $24,980 and the mayor’s base is $33,156.
For 2009, the highest paid councillor including expenses and wages was Richard Norcross, who received $31,846.39. Jess Prothero and Christine Brayford were close behind, receiving $31,349.31 and $31,062.90, respectively.
The number of committees a councillor is a member of affects their payout, be it for mileage or other expenses related to attending an event.
While The Herald was provided a list of committees, attendance is no longer taken at committee meetings and there is no record of how many meetings council members are attending. Rather than attendance for meetings, it is now simply marked whether or not there is quorum.
The 2009 costs for council members and the number of committees they are on are:
Mayor Mike MacEachern sits on 13 committees plus Simcoe County council meetings and received $47,032.53. He claimed $1,499 in mileage. Deputy Mayor Rick Milne received $39,630.31. He sits on seven committees and attends Simcoe County council meetings. He received $600 for a car allowance and claimed $1,090.38 in mileage. Milne also received $291.20 for mileage for his seat on the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority (NVCA). That cost is covered by the NVCA.
Coun. Richard Norcross is on seven committees and received $31,846.39, with mileage accounting for $1,185.63.
Coun. Jess Prothero sits on 10 committees and received $31,349.31. He claimed $1,087 in mileage.
Coun. Christine Brayford sits on seven committees and received $31,062.90. She didn’t receive compensation for mileage, but did get the $600 car allowance.
Coun. Jamie Smith sits on five committees and received $27,417.20. He also took the $600 car allowance, plus $74.35 in mileage.
Coun. Dennis Egan received $26,837.40. He resigned from the committees he sat on in 2008 and didn’t claim any mileage last year. He did get the $600 car allowance.
Coun. Jim Stone is on two committees. He earned $26,264.78 in 2009, including a $600 car allowance.
Coun. Barbara Huson also stepped down from her role on town committees in 2008, only retaining her seat on the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority board. Last year she received $25,550.33. She was compensated $526.50 for LSRCA mileage, which is paid for by the conservation authority.
To get attendance records for committee meetings, MacEachern said “to ask the person if they show up and if they say they have then they have and if they (say) they haven’t then they haven’t.”
“I can speak to my attendance at committee meetings, I’m at almost all of my committee meetings. I have missed a few but I’m on a lot of committees so sometimes there’s a conflict,” said MacEachern.
When the switch was made to marking quorum rather than attendance, MacEachern said the committee meeting recommendations and decisions were made a part of the council agenda.
Without having who is at a meeting documented, declaring a conflict of interest at meetings and attendance now relies on the honesty of committee members.
“There is an opportunity to declare the conflict at the meeting and those will be recorded in those minutes, but that would be up to the individual member to do that,” said MacEachern.
For meetings where big decisions are made, MacEachern said it is up to the individual to make it public whether or not they were a part of the decision.
The most costly category for the town, aside from health benefits and salaries, is telephone and communications at $11,153. Milne had the highest bill in the category, $2,616. He was followed by MacEachern at $2,244 and Prothero at $1,885. Also submitting telephone and communication bills over $1,000 were Norcross at $1,543 and Brayford at $1,498.
Of the money paid out to council members for 2009, over $16,000 was spent to send New Tecumseth council members to two conferences, which isn’t unusual, according to MacEachern.
“It really is up to the individual member of council to decide which (conferences) they want to attend,” he said.
New Tecumseth sent five councillors to the joint Rural Ontario Municipal Association and Ontario Good Roads Association conference held in Toronto in 2009 at a cost of $8,076.27. Norcross had the highest bill for the four-day ROMA/OGRA session, at $1,853.62.
The Beeton councillor also captured the top expense spot for the Association of Municipalities in Ontario meeting in Ottawa last August, with a total of $2,286.96 being spent on the four-day conference. The town sent four members of council to the AMO conference at a cost of $8,172.27.