Councillors Support Rotary But Who Pays?

The photo shows several members of Halton Hills Council at the Georgetown Rotary Club annual fundraising dinner last night. Pictured seated are Councillors Joan Robson, Bob Inglis and Jon Hurst, and standing Moya Johnson, Dave Kentner and myself, Jane Fogal.

Councillors attend many fundraising functions throughout the year but I am sure that many people wonder who is really paying. The answer is that councillors pay their own way. We do not have expense accounts to draw upon at the Town.

There is the odd time when we are invited by the organization and are given free tickets by the organization. But that usually happens when they want us to play a role in the event, ie they want us to be a speaker.

The expense accounts of Toronto City Councillors is a topic in the Toronto election but there is no comparison between their situation and ours, even though we do the same job. For example, when constituents call me they often apologize for calling me at home. I tell them that is okay because they have reached my home office. We do not have town offices or administrative assistants. We are given laptops and blackberries by the Town and then we are on our own. We schedule our own appointments, pay for our own paper and internet costs, and do our own filing. This is not the case in larger municipalities such as Oakville and Burlington. We run a very lean operation in Halton Hills.

There are some expenses that the Town covers such as mileage and expenses associated with conferences if the Town has approved our attendance.

I was amused a few years ago when the Harris government advocated that municipal governments should be cutting back the number of councillors as a great cost cutting measure. The cost to the municipality for a local councillor is very minimal in the overall budget and any cut would hardly be noticable on your tax bill.

Local Councillors in Halton Hills are considered part-time and are paid $22,330 per year. Regional Councillors are full time employees who act as both Regional and Local Councillors and are paid $65,134.

I hope this helps to clarify the councillor's expenses in the Town of Halton Hills.