Calgary city council won't freeze its pay for 2025
A motion to reconsider a 3.07 per cent pay increase was defeated in a 7-7 tie
A pay increase for Calgary council won't be rolled back this year, after a vote on the issue divided council down the middle.
A public hearing meeting of council lasted late into the evening on Tuesday, as councillors debated a motion to reconsider its approval of a compensation formula that gave them a 3.07 per cent raise, effective Jan. 1.
The motion ultimately failed after council deadlocked in a 7-7 vote.
Ward 5 Coun. Raj Dhaliwal moved to freeze councillors' salaries, arguing the decision would show council is listening to its residents, and that it would serve as a gesture of empathy and solidarity.
"Many residents in our city are facing unprecedented financial struggles, and it is important for council to show that we understand their realities and [stand] alongside them," Dhaliwal said in Tuesday's meeting.
Ward 1 Coun. Sonya Sharp, who was part of a group of councillors that announced on Friday they were working on a motion to freeze council salaries at its 2024 level until 2030, argued it's wrong for council to be receiving automatic pay raises in the first place.
"You need to evaluate what your job is as a public servant, and look at what's happening in Calgary when we're talking about a housing crisis. We also have an affordability crisis," Sharp said to reporters on Tuesday.
"With the [property] assessments coming out the way they did and the tax increases, I think we have to set an example."
The 3.07 per cent raise brought the mayor's annual salary to $220,298 and councillors' pay to $124,462. This year marked the fourth year in a row council got a raise.
Council's compensation is decided through a formula set by a citizen committee that was approved by the last city council, prior to the 2021 municipal election. The salary level is adjusted, up or down, based on a Statistics Canada report on the change in the average weekly earnings in Alberta.
Half of council opposed the motion to reconsider this formula, arguing councillors should not be weighing in on their own salaries, and that the formula that decides council pay already accounts for the economic situation Calgarians are facing, by factoring in Albertans' average earnings.
Ward 3 Coun. Jasmine Mian argued that the already difficult job of a city councillor is made more difficult when the work is systemically devalued. She and other councillors argued the motion was ineffective to help Calgarians who are financially struggling.
"It's really hard to listen to people polishing their halos over this when the money's not going back to citizens, it's going to sit in city coffers," Mian said.
Ward 9 Coun. Gian-Carlo Carra argued politicians should have as little to do with setting their own pay as possible, and that the motion ignores the work of citizen volunteers who are tasked with formulating council pay.
"We live in an age of unprecedented income inequality, and there are lots of people on the bottom end and the bottom end is growing. This is not the way you solve that. This is cheap politics," Carra said.
"Do not reconsider this. Do not get involved with your pay. Do not play these petty politics."
Mayor Jyoti Gondek, who added the item to Tuesday's agenda in the first place, voted in favour of the motion. She told reporters on Tuesday she thought the debate was appropriate in a year where Calgarians are facing affordability issues.
"We are facing the threat of tariffs from the U.S. right now," Gondek said. "If that happens, I know there will be a lot of people in our city that will be facing hardship. So this is a time for us to show leadership."
The debate came as this council nears the end of its term, with a municipal election scheduled for October.
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With files from Scott Dippel