Dear Editor,
Re: “City high earners top B.C.” News, Feb. 11.
I would like to respond to your story about City of Richmond staff compensation.
The article provides a false impression of salaries received by senior city staff versus those in other local governments. It reports total compensation earned by several senior staff and clearly creates the impression that these numbers reflect salaries of the staff.
In fact, the total compensation figures include not only salary, but also benefits and other payments received by staff in a given year. Other payments can include payouts for accumulated leave balances, such as vacation, retroactive payments, and other one-time payments. As a result, the total compensation can fluctuate significantly up or down in any given year and thus does not provide an accurate snapshot of staff’s base salaries or the actual rate of remuneration.
In 2013, a number of senior staff received significant additional one-time lump sum payments for a variety of reasons, which drove up their total compensation.
Richmond also has caps on leave balances which trigger automatic payouts when reached in order to reduce the size of large one-time payouts when staff retire or depart. With a very experienced and long serving senior management team, many of our staff have accumulated significant leave balances.
Only a handful of city staff actually had annual base salaries in 2013 that were above the arbitrary $200,000 benchmark applied in the article. When a broader scale is applied, Richmond’s senior staff salaries and the number of staff at the top salary level are comparable to those in our peer municipalities.
At any rate, each local government organization is structured differently. The responsibilities of senior staff, the management structures and the total numbers of employees can vary significantly, which will reflect in salary levels paid to staff. Our comparisons over the years have shown that Richmond’s overall staffing and payroll levels are lower than many of our neighbouring cities cited in the article. For example, in 2013, Richmond’s total payroll was $113,657,983. Burnaby, our closest comparator in terms of population, had a total payroll of $137,556,860.
We believe our city staff are extremely productive and manage and deliver a level of services that are among the best in the region. Our overall tax base remains among the lowest in the region’s largest municipalities. Our salaries are structured to ensure we attract and retain top quality managers and professionals in what is an increasingly competitive marketplace. That represents good value for taxpayers.
Malcolm D. Brodie
Mayor
