As stewards of the third largest B.C. school district, trustees have a big job and a heavy work load so their indemnities should be comparable to Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody city councillors, not other school trustees.
That was the justification several trustees made for not taking a wage cut proposed during this week's board of education meeting by Coquitlam trustee Jennifer Blatherwick, who argued that the indemnity of Anmore village councillors should be added to the calculation that determine’s trustee pay each year.
“I agree we all work hard,” Blatherwick said, but she said the current indemnity of $44,300 is much higher than that of Surrey ($32,684), Vancouver ($26,975.61) and Burnaby ($25,706.08) school trustees.
Adding Anmore Village council pay of $12,228 to the calculation, would drop School District 43 trustee pay to $36, 282.
“We expect employees to be consistently paid with other districts,” Blatherwick noted.
Port Moody trustee Keith Watkins said the reason for basing trustee pay off council pay was to acknowledge the board’s level of responsibility and duties were as significant as running a city, with larger budgets, more facilities and more employees.
“The board came up with a decision that makes sense,” Watkins said.
Port Coquitlam trustee Michael Thomas agreed, saying that to attract working families to the job of trustee the indemnity needs to fairly compensate them for their time.
While their pay won’t go down, trustees are losing a tax exemption on 30% of the indemnity as a result of new federal tax rules. However, the base salary will go up because all three city councils are getting more money to compensate them for the loss of the tax exemption. SD43 pay will be based on the average of the salaries, a calculation that takes place each year in January by board policy.
However, it won’t be known until Feb. 1 what the new pay rate will be for trustees, officials told the Tri-City News.
Trustees also want to know how to claim expenses including car allowances in the future and have asked staff for a report.
