Chestermere to create ‘sunshine’ list detailing staff salaries

In an effort to improve transparency at city hall, council has approved the creation of a compensation disclosure policy detailing staff salary ranges.
The new publicly available policy will, when completed, detail the positions, salary ranges and benefits that are available to City of Chestermere employees.
“I commend Councilor Bold for bringing that to council as an idea, it’s something that hasn’t been done before,” said Chestermere Mayor Marshall Chalmers.
“I think it’s a great idea, it’s very consistent with the majority of communities,” he said.
While the idea was first brought forward by Councilor Laurie Bold, the rest of council had some concerns with her original proposal.
In her original motion, Bold requested that the policy include the name, salary, years of experience and severance pay.
She said that this level of detail was required to be fully transparent and would help to rebuild communication and trust with city residents.
“I made a promise to the people who elected me I listened to what they asked for and transparency was a major topic,” said Bold.
Included with her motion were examples of the compensation disclosure list she was looking to see created, including one from the City of Lloydminster that included the level of detail she was proposing.
While council approved of the concept, they felt the level of detail proposed by Bold went too far.
“We have to be careful of course of all the rules and regulations around FOIP and we don’t want to go offside there,” said Chalmers.
Bold was willing to amend her motion to include positions instead of names but held firm that exact salaries needed to be disclosed.
In the end, council voted 6 to 1 against Bold’s motion.
They chose instead to pass a second motion put forward by Councillor Ritesh Narayan that asked for a compensation list that includes salary ranges and positions rather than names and exact salaries.
“To me that’s being very open and transparent,” said Chalmers, “It doesn’t go offside with anybody feeling that their personal information is out there.”
The second motion, put forward was passed 6 to 1 with Bold being the only vote against.
She explained her position prior to the vote that while she does approve of the new motion she feels a salary range is too large.
“I liked my motion better and I think it was the way we should do it,” she said.