New Westminster trustees have unanimously agreed to give themselves their first raise in about seven years.
Effect Jan. 1, local trustees’ pay will be adjusted annually based on the most recent five-year rolling average of Vancouver’s consumer price index, thanks to a change in policy approved by the board at its last regular public meeting.
Come New Year’s Day, that means New West trustees could get about a 1.3 per cent pay increase, judging by the five-year average from 2010 to 2014.
Regular trustees currently take in $21,513 a year before expenses, according to statements of financial information on the district’s website, while vice-chairs and chairs make $23,638 and $23,888 respectively.
Under the old policy, the board had no mechanism to guide it in the awkward business of hiking its own pay, so trustees simply left it alone during the last few rocky financial years in the district, but that approach isn’t sustainable, according to trustee Kelly Slade-Kerr.
“If you don’t adjust your stipend on an annual basis, it can lead to significant budget pressures down the road,” she said, “and we don’t want to be in a situation where we need to have large increases in one year so that the stipend for trustees is sufficient to attract people to the position. You don’t want a position like a school trustee not available to people who couldn’t take it for financial reasons.”
Slade-Kerr headed up a subcommittee struck by the board in May to look into ways to manage the trustee stipend.
After looking at how the B.C. School Trustees Association and eight other districts dealt with theirs, the committee decided tying annual adjustments in trustees’ pay to the region’s consumer price index was the way to go.
Using a five-year average, meanwhile, will help avoid any large fluctuations in pay, according to Slade-Kerr.
Trustee Michael Ewen called the solution “elegant.”
A 36-year trustee, he said the board has tried numerous other solutions over the years, including linking trustee pay to city council pay.
But continuing down that path might have put New West in the same position as Coquitlam, he said.
“Coquitlam has by far the highest paid trustees in the province because they’ve linked themselves to a city council,” Ewen said. “This seems to me to be the fairest way.”
