astephenson@medicinehatnews.com
Medicine Hat’s mayor and aldermen cost the city less in 2009 than they did in 2008, according to the salary and benefit figures released by City Hall this week.
Salaries and benefits for the mayor and eight aldermen amounted to $437,000 in 2009, down from $451,000 the year before.
Mayor Norm Boucher, whose position is full-time, makes a base salary of approximately $61,000 a year. The part-time aldermen make a base salary of $20,449 a year, except for Ald. Ty Schneider, whose base salary is $19,869. Schneider declined a slight salary increase that was due all aldermen based on Alberta’s cost-of-living index.
When it comes to benefits and allowances, the figures vary from alderman to alderman. Each alderman is allotted a basic expense account of approximately $10,000 — however, above and beyond that in the “benefits and allowances” category is everything from dental and vision coverage to per diem payments for city business to travel and tuition expenses.
It is in the travel category where the biggest variation between aldermen can be seen. Ald. John Hamill spent the most, at $8,821, while Ald. Graham Kelly spent the least, at $981.
Hamill says his travel expenses are due to his attendance at conferences such as the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) and the AUMA (Alberta Urban Municipalities Association) convention, as well as the AGM of Canadian Badlands Ltd., a board on which he serves.
Hamill says the cost of going to these kind of events is simply the cost of doing business.
“It’s good value. The fact that one alderman was two or three thousand dollars over and someone else was two or three thousand dollars under doesn’t mean anything,” Hamill says. “If you consider that we are in fact, the caretakers of a billion dollar industry — which is our energy division — I don’t know of many boards in Canada or elsewhere in the world that operate for a couple of thousand dollars a month.”
Kelly agrees, even though he spent less on conferences and conventions than the rest of his colleagues and says he personally does not find the AUMA convention particularly useful.
“I don’t think we have any members of council who are abusing it,” Kelly says. “Those who are going to the conferences are going because they want to learn something — they think it will make their work here more effective.”
When council’s expense claims became public at this time last year, it made a splash in the media and drew some criticism from members of the public who believed the figures were too high.
“I think all of us were sensitized by that last year when these numbers came out,” says Mayor Norm Boucher. However, Boucher says each member of council must decide whether a specific conference or training seminar will be worth the money. For example, he says he will be attending this year’s FCM convention in Toronto, because he believes he can learn something from the large cities that will be in attendance.
“The public can always question it — there’s some who think it should cost nothing,” Boucher says. “But I think there has to be some money there for development.”
Ald. Ty Schneider was the second-biggest spender on council in 2008 — in 2009, he was the second-lowest.
He says as a first-time alderman, he needed to attend a number of conferences and courses to get his feet under him. But the following year, he decided he didn’t need them.
“I’m not seeing that they’re that revolutionary that we need to be spending that kind of money,” Schneider says. “But at the same time, in your first year in — and even after this next election for the new people that come in — they’ve got to expect that there’s going to be a cost to learning. The public has to be aware that that’s the cost of training an alderman.

Travel Expenses
Mayor

N. Boucher - $5,530

Aldermen

T. Clugston - $4,006
R. Dumanowski - $3,247
J. Friesen - $2,004

J. Hamill - $8,821

G. Kelly - $981
T. Schneider - $2,963
J. Thompson - $6,782
J. White - $7,859