Coaldale town council approves pay increases

These mark increases of approximately 42% and 31% respectively.

Van Rijn says, aside from cost of living adjustments, compensation for town council has not been changed or reviewed since 2013.

Hillcrest Financial conducted a review in 2021, measuring Coaldale town council’s compensation against nine other comparable municipalities in Alberta.

Of the 10 included municipalities, the mayor of Morinville was paid the most at $65,664 while Coalhurst’s mayor made the least at $17,148.

“It came back that the Town of Coaldale’s council is below the 25th percentile,” says Van Rijn. “In other words, there’s 75% of the 10 municipalities that honourariums are higher than the Town of Coaldale based on our population.”

According to Van Rijn, Coaldale will be in the 65th percentile once the increases come into effect.

Another reason for the raises, he says, was that Coaldale never adjusted its remuneration when municipal office holders lost their one-third tax-exempt status in 2019. Other local governments, including Lethbridge and Red Deer, gave their mayors and councillors more money to make up for this change.

Van Rijn adds that he has been working into the evenings and on weekends for much of his first year in office.

“In my case, the mayor position historically is referred to as a part-time position or half-day,” says Van Rijn. “For what’s going on in the Town of Coaldale currently, I am very hands-on and I put in essentially a full-time job working as mayor now… meeting with community groups, residents, and working with the various levels of government a municipality has to deal with.”

Van Rijn says the approved updates to the Travel & Subsistence Policy include allowances that are given to members of council, generally for when they are travelling out of town.

“A lot of the verbiage in that policy was still from 1991,” says Van Rijn. “A good example is, back in the day, we used to get five dollars a day for long-distance phone calls.”

Instead, members of town council can now qualify for $10 per day for data roaming and phone calls when outside of Canada.

As well, compensation for private accommodation has increased from $15 per night to $50 per night, daily meal allowances went up from $43 to $60, phrasing for international travel has been updated to include more current currency exchange rates, and the fuel mileage policy will now reflect the Canada Revenue Agency standard instead of the Province of Alberta standard.

Van Rijn told LNN that he feels the changes to both policies are fair and help to keep Coaldale up with the times.

by David Opinko

Coaldale town council approves pay increases

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