Salary increases for Montreal municipal officials will no longer be calculated according to inflation, but rather based on increases granted to city employees.
In the future, “indexation will consist of increasing, for each financial year, a percentage corresponding to the average of the economic increases granted to the groups of executive, white-collar, blue-collar and general professional employees of the City for the previous year,” indicates a summary of the new regulation adopted Monday evening by the city council.
Previously, elected officials received an increase in their remuneration corresponding to the rate of increase in the consumer price index for Quebec, a mechanism allowing them to avoid having to vote on their own salaries.
This decision does not change their treatment for the year 2024: last November, when the budget was tabled, Mayor Valérie Plante decreed a salary freeze so that elected officials could contribute to efforts to tighten the city’s finances.
The freeze, which was officially accepted by city council Monday night, represents savings of $556,000.
For 2023, elected officials had obtained a 6.7% increase. If the old formula had been applied for 2024, the increase would have been 4.5%, municipal documents indicate.
With the new formula, if there were no freeze, salaries would increase by 2% for 2024, since this is the increase that was granted to the four groups of employees.
The opposition, for its part, called for an independent analysis of the issue. “We are asking the administration to make representations to the Quebec government and the Union des municipalités du Québec so that it is no longer necessary for elected officials to vote on their own salaries,” said Aref Salem, leader of the opposition on city council, who said he was “embarrassed” to have to make such a decision that places them in a conflict of interest.
Two elected officials, Team LaSalle councillor Richard Deschamps and the mayor of the Anjou borough, Luis Miranda, intervened to make known their disagreement with the proposed new formula.
According to Mr. Deschamps, elected officials would be disadvantaged by such a calculation and thus contribute to a “devaluation” of their work with the population, while they do not count the hours devoted to their tasks.
“What we are proposing is that the indexation be applied on the basis of four representative groups,” replied the president of the executive committee, Luc Rabouin. “What we are going to give as economic indexation to these four groups of employees is what will apply to elected officials. It seems to me that it is difficult to be more equitable than that.”