THE number of municipal employees earning more than $100,000 a year has jumped, according to recently released 2012 financial statements.
The City of North Vancouver and the districts of North and West Vancouver have released the previous year's financial statements, a requirement under the Financial Information Act.
Municipalities must provide financial information, such as salaries and expenses, for any employees earning more than $75,000. The number of employees earning a six-figure salary in all three municipalities rose from 156 in 2011 to approximately 194 in 2012, with the District of North Vancouver boasting the highest number at around 93 employees.
"North Shore residents should be very concerned," said Jordan Bateman, B.C. director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. "You have almost 200 employees now making $100,000 in a year between these three municipalities. Lots of overlap obviously in what these positions are doing."
Bateman said the District of North Vancouver's surge in salary increases is of particular concern.
"The City of North Van stayed pretty much static, District of West Van went up by 10, but I can't think of any reason why the list of six figures in the District of North Vancouver would have gone up by 60 per cent," he said, adding that he has talked to other municipalities across the province and most stay either static or have very slight increases.
"I don't know what the DNV did, but it is definitely not in line with what's happened in other municipalities," said Bateman.
District of North Vancouver spokeswoman Jeanine Bratina said the difference from last year's salaries is 31 additional employees making more than $100,000 per year.
"The majority of this number is made up of some of the district's fire services staff, and that is due to fire services staff receiving three years' retroactive pay due to a new collective agreement," she said, adding that 27 of the 31 are from Fire and Rescue Services. "The numbers should be back on track next year, as there will be no retroactive pay reported for fire services."
The highest-ranking salaries for all three municipalities, however, are still the executives
at the top, with all three chief administrative officers pulling in more than $230,000 last year. Ken Tollstam, chief administrative officer for the City of North Vancouver, earned the most at more than $269,000.
"They have been very crafty over the years, the 200 or so positions like this that are available across the province, in continually pushing their salaries higher," said Bateman. He said when one CAO gets a raise, it usually causes a ripple effect throughout the province. Bateman said though it rarely happens, there is a concern that a CAO may jump from one community to another.
Of the three mayors, Richard Walton of the District of North Vancouver had the largest salary of almost $96,000, followed closely by City of North Vancouver Mayor Darrell Mussatto at more than $93,000 while District of West Vancouver Mayor Michael Smith earned less than $75,000. Councillors in all three municipalities averaged between $30,000 and $40,000.
"No one at city hall ever takes a pay cut, so once you bump them up to a certain
level, they're only going to continue to grow from there," said Bateman. "The best you can usually hope is to get them to freeze the salaries, but even that very rarely happens."
He said when there is a significant increase, residents should investigate further, to see if the mayor and council are exercising proper oversight and demanding answers from their administrative officers.
"When you see this number jump like that, you have to ask several questions," said Bateman. "What exactly is going on here, and are we really getting that much better service from our civic employees to warrant that kind
of pay increase?" The overall spending on police services is also included in the municipal financial statements, though specific details of earnings are not made available.
Police in the District of West Vancouver earned more than $10 million collectively, and policing services cost the District of North Vancouver more than $11 million last year. However, the City of North Vancouver was unable to provide earnings because of a legal dispute over pay raises for some of its RCMP members in 2009 and 2010. The final numbers were not determined and therefore not included in last year's statements.
Bateman said for concerned residents, the best thing to do is to get out and vote at election time.
"It all comes back to the ballot box. Until you get taxpayers willing to go to the ballot box and cast their vote for fiscally responsible government, this will continue on and on," he said. "If people who are struggling to pay their taxes and see tax increases every year, if they don't come out and put a scare into their council and probably move some people around, hold people accountable for their spending decisions, this will just continue to escalate."
