Watchdog questions five-fold boost in discretionary funding for Vancouver councillors
Posted January 21, 2019 5:32 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — Taxpayers in Vancouver have a right to know why, that’s what a well-known critic of government waste says after learning city councillors could get a huge boost in funding to better interact with the public.
Mayor Kennedy Stewart says the increase from $6,000 a year to $30,000 will help each of the city’s 10 councillors reduce their ‘administrative load’ to improve how they interact with the public.
“Really, councillors in Vancouver are very, very under-supported when compared to other councillors across the country, so this is a good first step,” Stewart adds.
However, Kris Sims, the BC Director of the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation is not impressed.
“Well, this is really setting off alarm bells as far as taxpayer dollars go, um, that’s a huge increase,” she says. “Taxpayers need to know where is this money coming from, what exactly is it for, why the sudden demand for such an increase and why can’t they handle this with the current funding and staffing levels.”
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Stewart says changes, which may include hiring more staff, will be reviewed this fall, but for now, the money needed will come out of the city’s contingency fund.
“This is my initiative. This is not something that council came to me with. It’s that I think this council needs this extra support, so I’m really hoping that they’ll support this and we can improve our interaction with the public.”
Stewart also says other municipalities have wards, but Vancouver’s ten councillors are getting deluged with emails from all over the city which has a population of more than 650,000 people, but Sims says that doesn’t explain why the status quo suddenly has to change.
“It’s a huge jump. To just say that people are busy or they’re getting inundated with phone calls and emails, well, most of us are busy,” Sims adds. “Most of us in our day-to-day lives at our workstations are busy. We need to be very clear exactly what this money is for.”
Sims is also critical of the $300,000 needed this year coming out of the city’s contingency fund.
“This is very alarming for a lot of taxpayers and it is essential that this information gets out there to everybody. Even if you voted for this mayor, you’ll definitely want to know where your money is going.”
It’s not clear if this means more staff will be hired, but Stewart says that’s possible.
“Under the current rules, councillors are allowed to combine those funds and so, for example, you could see councillors combining to hire a full-time person or using the funds on their own to perhaps hire part-time or contract folks. I mean, the thing about discretionary funds, it’s up to them to apply it to themselves and how they best think it could be used.”
City staff have confirmed the proposed change would be immediate and it will be reviewed during the next budgeting process this fall.
They’re also reporting Toronto just increased the budget for each councillor from $241,000 to $482,000 for their constituency work due to the contraction of wards in that city.
In Vancouver, the discretionary spending of councillors is reported to the public every quarter.
