Saint John mayor Don Darling has decided to donate the net increase of his pay increase to charity for next year after hearing feedback from both sides of the contentious issue.
Council gave third and final reading to the pay raises at its latest meeting, which would see the mayor earning about $74,000 up from $57,000.
#sjcouncil makes it official: 3rd reading given to pay raises which would take effect at start of 2017 Norton, Merrithew & Sullivan voted no pic.twitter.com/HMbJ4nneZo
— Laura Lyall (@LauraLyall) December 12, 2016
Mayor Darling, during an emotionally-charged debate on the issue near the end of November, declared that he would not be accepting a pay raise. However, after hearing words of support from his fellow councillors, said that he would make a final decision on the issue later. He calls the decision “agonizing”.
While the mayor didn’t vote on this, and only votes in tie-breaking situations, he supports the recomendations on the pay raises and believes they’re fair.
“I know this is controversial for people,” says Darling. “I received a significant amount of very positive feedback, that this is fair and reasonable, and has been ignored, frankly, for 12 years.”
On the flip side, Darling says there’s also been some very negative feedback, including attacks on himself and members of council.
“I’ve had members of the public on the no side suggest to me that the mayor should work for free, that that should be the mayor’s civic duty,” says Darling. “Well I’m a husband, a father, I have kids in school, I’m just like anybody else.”
Darling says he would welcome a change to the Municipalities Act where there was an outside group that would review this, as the only way for them to raise their salaries right now is to vote for them.
I asked mayor @dondarlingSJ if he’s going to accept the pay increase. Darling says he’ll be donating the net increase to charity #sjcouncil.
— Laura Lyall (@LauraLyall) December 13, 2016
Councillors Gary Sullivan, Greg Norton and David Merrithew all voted against third reading of the bylaw for the pay increases, as they did for the first and second reading.
The new salaries come into effect in the new year. These salary increases were recommended by an independant third party.
