Trustees take turn looking at pay

KAMLOOPS – After deciding against pay raises the last two years, including a pay raise that would have cost the district more than $14,000 last summer, board of education trustees will again look at recommendations for their raises Monday evening.

Trustees are required to review their stipends annually and last year it was recommended the board take an increase of between 7.5 and 8.6 per cent, the same as what several other similar sized districts took in the same time period.

That increase would have pushed the board chair to $22,023 from $20,485, the board vice chair to $20,956 from $19,465 and trustees to $20,027 from $18,445. At an average raise of $1,567 it was about $400 more per trustee than the previous year recommendations in an effort to get the district in line with other districts.

Recommendations are typically made to move the district to within the 75th percentile of 10 other districts with the 10,000-20,000 full time students and similar recommendations can be expected out of the report this year. School District 73 has sat in the middle of the pack (in this group of 10) for a number of years when it comes to number of students and remuneration.

City councillors have also been split on dealings around pay increases. Recently it took a total of six votes in the decision to take a pay raise or to form a committee to look at future remuneration to eventually move forward on a $1,000 interim increase and the formation of a citizen committee to make recommendations on the salary and benefits of Kamloops councillors.

To contact a reporter for this story, email jstahn@infotelnews.ca, call (250)819-3723 or tweet @JennStahn.