Ottawa Now - As Ottawa residents brace for higher municipal taxes, should city councillors get a payraise?

While a little more money in the piggy bank sounds like a proposal everyone would take right now, perhaps a payraise for city councillors would cause a fair degree of division, especially with a pending increase for several municipal taxes. Last Spring, the Ford government unfroze the wages of Ontario MPPs, and Toronto city councillors voted to increase their salaries by 24 percent. Here at home, Capital Ward councillor Shawn Menard is bringing a motion to City Hall within the next few days. He wants city staff to review other municipalities, and adjust the salaries for Ottawa’s Mayor and city councillors in line with that. Joining us with his two cents is Jon Willing, a Journalism Professor at Algonquin College and a former Municipal Affairs reporter with Postmedia. He agrees that these wages should be reviewed on a regular basis, but also admits that these salary rates will always be politicized.