There are big changes ahead for how mayors and municipal councillors are compensated in New Brunswick.

In the new town of Tantramar, the salaries for mayor, deputy mayor and seven town councillors will be roughly triple that of current salaries for Sackville town council. That’s according to numbers published recently by the department of local government.

The new mayor of Tantramar, to be elected on Nov. 28, will make about $47,000 per year, that’s a $32,000 raise compared to the current Sackville mayor, who gets about $15,000 per year.

Councillors in the new town will get $23,650 per year, an increase of $15,000 over the current rate of compensation for Sackville councillors, which is about $8,000.

Tantramar’s deputy mayor, elected by the new council sometime after Nov. 28, will make just over $28,000. That’s roughly $19,000 more than the current Sackville deputy mayor.

Tantramar is larger than Sackville both by population and physical size. The new municipality has a tax base of just over $1 billion. The 2021 tax base for the town of Sackville was about $662 million.

While the province has ultimate authority in all municipal matters regarding the new town of Tantramar, the recommendation to triple salaries came from the local elected officials advisory committee, which is made up of:

• Sackville mayor Shawn Mesheau
• Sackville town councillor Matt Estabrooks
• Dorchester deputy mayor Robert Corkerton
• Dorchester mayor Debbie Wiggins-Colwell
• Pointe de Bute LSD representative Mary Ellen Trueman
• Pointe de Bute LSD representative Greg Martin
• Sackville LSD representative Chris Milner
• Dorchester LSD representative Matt Beal

So far, all but Mary Ellen Trueman, Chris Milner, and Matt Beal have put their names forward as candidates for Nov. 28 elections.

Back in June of this year, the province released suggested ranges for new salaries which indicated increases were in order, but not to the scale now recommended. The province suggested a range of $11,000 to $33,000 for mayors in new municipalities with 5,000 to 10,000 residents.

Mesheau says the elected officials committee met virtually on Aug. 10 to discuss compensation, and chose to follow guidelines suggested by the Association of Francophone Municipalities of New Brunswick (AFMNB). That AFMNB guide suggests a mayoral salary of $31,900 to $57,800 for a municipality the size of Tantramar, with factors such as the size of tax bases, variety of services offered, institutions present, and physical size of territory to help determine the level within that range.

“During our discussions concerns were raised that the province is not taking a more active role in bringing about uniformity when it comes to remuneration for mayors and councils across the province,” Mesheau wrote in an email. “Reform presents itself as a perfect time to enact a means to identify appropriate salaries for elected officials,” he wrote.

Increase is “way off the chart”

Mount Allison politics professor and former Sackville town Coun. Geoff Martin says while he see a case for some increase in council salaries, the tripling of remuneration over current Sackville levels seems excessive. Martin says instead of tripling, a one-third increase would be more reasonable.

“That’s reflecting, okay, bigger municipality, maybe there’s more issues,” says Martin. “You’re in the Tantramar now, and we have a federal prison in the municipality, right? And we have things that the old town of Sackville organization never had to cope with. So I can certainly see the reason for some kind of increase, but the kind of increase that we’re talking about here is, I think, way off the chart.”

Martin points out that although the size and population of the town has grown with amalgamation, a ward system for councillors does limit the size of their area of representation.

He wonders at the increased expenditure, moving to a new budget line of $217,000 for mayor and council salaries. Currently Sackville spends about $72,000 on the same item (CHMA has reached out to Dorchester officials for information on their salaries, and have not heard back as of publication time.) “How much in the way of sidewalk, and how much in the way of patching of asphalt, will the town have to say no to because of the significant increase?” asks Martin.

Martin says that the salary spike doesn’t really solve any problems, since Sackville and Dorchester have not typically had issues recruiting candidates to run for office, unlike other parts of the province. “It’s a fairly radical move. And I think it’s a poor decision in terms of the local conditions here in Tantramar,” he says.

There’s also the potential for unintended consequences, such as the monetization of the positions, says Martin. “The whole idea of municipal government historically was that you serve, it’s a part time position, and you’re not going to be isolated from people. You’re still going to have a job and you’re still going to have your social networks and so on.”

“If you start to make it possible for people to treat this as a full time job… and that $47,000 a year for the mayor is more money than a lot of people earn in a full time job… Then this is a job that maybe is coveted for financial reasons, more than a matter of community service.”

He adds that in New Brunswick where there are no financial disclosure rules for municipal candidates, this could be especially problematic. “If municipal positions become more lucrative, will the willingness of people to spend money on municipal campaigns rise?” asks Martin.

Increasing access and participation?

There are also arguments in favour of an increase in municipal council salaries. In a recent article in The Conversation, associate professor of public policy at York University Zachary Spicer makes the case that bigger salaries can recruit better quality candidates, and also make public office more accessible to diverse communities who may be socio-economically disadvantaged. In Ontario, where Spicer’s research is focussed, a 2016 study found, “75 per cent of those elected… were men. The median age of councillors was 60 in rural communities and 61 in urban areas.”

So far in Tantramar, 11 of the 15 candidates for council are men.

Ontario municipalities tend to be on a different scale than many rural New Brunswick entities. Spicer refers to a survey which found that in Ontario municipalities of 100,000 to 250,000 people, officials reported taking home an average $35,442 in salary.

Martin says in his experience, economic diversity has not been an issue on Sackville council, even with low rates of compensation. “We have had working people and low and middle income people who have sat in the council,” says Martin, “and that’s been on what I think you could argue were perhaps overly modest rates of compensation.”

“There are a lot of people who have found the bonus of that current income as a help in terms of their personal budget, or their family budget,” says Martin. And in a municipality where there hasn’t been a shortage of people stepping up, “whether we need to triple those [salaries] based on, ‘this is going to make it better for those who are struggling economically to actually be able to participate’… Well, they already may participate. So, I’m not sure who this will encourage.”

Listen to the CHMA story below: