Media Release: Clr. Farr re: HWT New Citizen Appointees

The Hamilton Waterfront Trust Board of Directors (HWT) would like to advise the public of the following...

On Wednesday, March 28th City Council officially approved two new citizen appointees via the Selection Committee process to our HWT Board of Directors. These appointments provide a full compliment of HWT Board members.

We officially welcome Trent Jarvis and Bernie Mueller and thank them for their desire to serve as volunteers.

The HWT BoD is looking forward to having the matter of the plaintiff motion for a certificate of pending litigation argued in open court on Friday, April 6th beginning at 10am in room 704 of the John Sopinka Court House, where members of the public and the media will have the opportunity to observe and be informed.

Chair Jason Farr

On the Money

Further to the discussion that has ensued concerning how much the Mayor gets paid, we put the following questions to the city, whose reply follows:

For the Mayor and each councillor, can you provide the following information:

1. How much remuneration is paid as their base salary
2. How much remuneration is paid for anything whatsoever, in the form of money, that they receive beyond their base salary.
3. Anything, if applicable, that is received in kind in consideration of their role/work.
4. Anything else (if applicable) over and above the categories above that would help Hamiltonians get a complete picture of total compensation received (whether in payment or in kind).On the City's behalf, Mike Zegaric, replied as follows:

Report FCS18015, represents the legislative requirement to report the itemized statement of the remuneration and expenses paid to each Member of Council and citizen appointees to various local boards in the preceding year (2017).

Report FCS18015 represents all paid remuneration, more specifically, Appendix “A” of Report FCS18015 provides the remuneration paid to the Mayor and Members of Council in respect of his or her services as a member of Council or any other body, including a local board, to which the member has been appointed by Council or on which the member holds office by virtue of being a member of Council.

Staff are not aware of any in-king remuneration provided to Council members in 2017, nor any other form of monetary or non-monetary remuneration.

Hope this answers all of your questions

Click here to see the reports that Mike has referenced. More specifically, you can click here. 

Thanks Mike for your assistance in this matter.

A Million Dollar Question

In recent post in The Hamiltonian, Member of Parliament Bob Bratina, posted his views on how much it should cost to run the office of the Mayor. Bratina argues that it could be run effectively for much less that a million dollars a year. His full comment is:

In Hamilton the Mayor’s office budget for 2018 is $1,119,780. Mayor Bonnie Crombie’s office budget is $962,000, up $388,000 since Hazel McCallion left. I had copied Hazel’s approach which was four staffers, and spending at just over $1 dollar per population. Mayor Crombie apparently added two more staffers to bring it up to six. Brampton Mayor Linda Jeffrey had been criticized for her $846,000 office budget, which included the same number of staffers as Crombie's.
In all, over four years I saved over $1 million dollars on my budget, and achieved a new stadium and GO Train station with no increase for those projects to the residential tax base. The mayor's office could easily be run effectively in Hamilton for much less than a million dollars a year.

We have reached out to Mayor Eisenberger for comment and will publish his comments if he responds.