A scheduled salary increase for Calgary city council will go ahead after an attempt to freeze pay was defeated in a tie vote.
City council got an update on compensation late Tuesday, after both Calgary mayor Jyoti Gondek and ward 1 councillor Sonya Sharp announced intentions last week to reverse the pay bump through separate motions.
“I think it’s absolutely appropriate, in a year where so many Calgarians are facing affordability issues, for us to freeze our salary for this year,” Gondek said Tuesday.
Sharp’s planned motion, co-signed by Andre Chabot, Terry Wong and Dan McLean, was to freeze council’s salaries at 2024 levels for the next five years.
“With the assessments coming out the way they did, and the tax increases, I think we have to set an example,” Sharp told reporters Tuesday.
Calgary’s mayor is set to make $220,298, while city councilors will take home $124,462 in 2025, which is a 3.07 per cent pay increase over last year.
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If the pay freeze was approved, the mayor’s salary would remain at $213,737 and $120,755 for city councilors.
However, the motion to freeze council salaries for 2025 from ward 5 coun. Raj Dhaliwal was defeated in a tie vote.
A screenshot of the reconsideration motion to freeze council salaries for 2025.
Global News
It required a reconsideration of last year’s approval of recommendations from the Council Compensation Committee, which would’ve needed a two-thirds majority for approval.
That committee recommended continuing the use the formula of Alberta average weekly earnings data to dictate council salaries.
2025 will mark the fourth consecutive year a pay increase was dictated by that formula.
Ward 2 coun. Jennifer Wyness argued that wage savings from former ward 6 coun. Richard Pootmans’ departure from council late last year would “cover far more” than the proposed freeze.
Others, like ward 11 coun. Kourtney Penner said the savings from freezing pay would be a drop in the bucket in the city budget.
“Showing up for people actually comes when we do our budget,” she told reporters. “This is a decision that would have zero effect on affordability for Calgarians.”
Sharp later posted to social media and said she was disappointed in the outcome of the vote.
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