Just when you thought it was safe to talk about council pay and benefits… After a contentious conversation about the subject at Committee of the Whole earlier this month, city council re-opened the debate for further discussion, and then they decided that they want to talk about it further next month. That was the big action at this month’s regular council meeting, but it was not the only action. Let’s recap…

Regular Meeting of City Council – February 24, 2026

For the convenience and support of those marking the Holy Month of Ramadan, city council started their meeting early and if you had looked at the agenda in advanced, it seemed pretty straightforward, just the ratification of business as Committee of the Whole. And yet, as careful council observers know, the simple agendas tend to be the most complicated.

From the jump at 9 am, council went in-camera to discuss “Neeve Street Parking Lot – Development Opportunity”. One hour and 14 minutes later, council returned with Mayor Cam Guthrie telling everyone that council had not finished receiving the presentation in closed, but they didn’t want to delay the start of the meeting any further. Once the open agenda was complete, they’d go back in-camera.

Council approved the City-Wide Parking Strategy Terms of Reference and then moved on to the Internal Audit Work Plan. Council wasn’t terribly concerned about the audit stuff, but they did have additional questions about the accompanying request for a winter maintenance review they added at committee.

A memo attached to this agenda on the subject said that staff would have to pause the graffiti and escooter bylaw reviews to proceed, and that their goal was to bring a framework to council in an information report in September with results coming back as soon as January 2027, but council wanted absolute certainty. Guthrie said he wanted to see options in advance of the 2027 budget confirmation in February, while Public Services DCAO Colleen Clack-Bush noted that the city won’t likely see the real effects of any changes till after the next winter.

After approving those motions, council dug into the Council Remuneration Review. At committee, council approved no new increases for the mayor and councillors save for the annual cost of living increase approved in the City’s non-unionized employee policy, but one delegate asked council to approved at least a three per cent increase for next term to give potential councillors of limited means more stability and assurance in running for office.

This is the point where Mayor Guthrie started playing jazz with the recommendations and invited council to engage in some further debate to massage the motion. He explained that he had come to the conclusion that they might be doing the next term of council a disservice by passing on a zero per cent increase and hoped to find a middle ground between that and the original recommendation that was an almost 33 per cent increase. Councillor Phil Allt said that he was worried about council “pulling something out of thin air” and then a councillor pulled something out of thin air.

After some council back-and-forth Councillor Leanne Caron put a new three-part motion on the floor, keeping the mayor’s zero increase for next term, plus the direction to review the ward boundaries and council compensation in 2028, but now with a new recommendation to increase council pay to $60,000, or 11.9 per cent. Caron noted that if this were any other position in city hall, they would not be having this struggle, and while affordability in the community is a constant discussion, council needs to acknowledge how the role has substantially changed in the last few years.

By a vote of 8-5, council quickly approved the amendment to recommendation #1, taking the mention of councillor pay out it and simply making it about mayoral compensation. Before proceeding, Councillor Dan Gibson said that he felt like he was being backed into a corner because removing the mention of council pay from the original motion then puts all the chips on that new third recommendation, otherwise there’s no decision about council compensation for next term.

Council passed recommendation #2 with only Gibson voting against, but by the time they got to recommendation #3 it had been re-written so that the increase was only four per cent (or $55,000) compared to the original 11 per cent. Gibson made the point that with the current compensation, this amounted to a $1,500 per year increase making all this last-minute haggling barely worth it. That brought us back to Allt who said that he wouldn’t support this motion because it was poor governance. He would only support a referral, which prompted Guthrie to ask if Allt wanted to make a motion to refer and he did!

But where to refer it was the question: The March Committee of the Whole meeting is next week and waiting till April’s meeting would mean waiting till the end of that month to ratify it, which would run right up against the opening of nominations on May 1. Really, the only option was to have the recommendation brought back to the regular council meeting at the end of March and bypassing committee, but that opened up another question: What exactly were staff supposed to bring back?

Corporate Services DCAO Stephen O’Brien said that getting direction about the level of information that council is looking for would be helpful, but it also had to be “light touch” work; maybe it’s a new percentage, maybe a new list of comparators, or maybe it was about the analysis on the amount recommended. Staff won’t be able provide a deep dive, but they need that direction and eventually a referral motion directing staff to work with the chair of Corporate Services to come up with options in a memo was put on the table, but some councillors still had their doubts.

Gibson had a different idea. He said that he wanted to look at a motion asking staff to re-examine the compensation for committee chairs and councillors serving on outside boards. He made the point that these roles are part of what’s driving the increased workloads, and that councillors were given top ups in salary for taking them on in the past. Maybe they should be brought back? Gibson eventually decided to shelve the motion (for now).

It seemed like all this was settled, but there was one last motion from Councillor Rodrigo Goller to focus staff’s research on single tier Ontario municipalities with populations between 130,000 and 500,000. Goller said that he wanted to give staff some explicit guidance with this motion or otherwise risk the possibility of staff coming back with the same answer as before.

After an eight-minute break, council continued with the rest of the agenda. On Water and Wastewater Servicing Allocation Policy and Bylaw delegate Susan Watson said that she supported the “use it or lose it” provision but also wanted some additional annual reporting to council about the number of extensions sought and how many ended up declined or granted. Councillor Carly Klassen asked staff about that idea. Acting DCAO Terry Gayman said that the reporting will come through the City’s annual Growth Management and Affordable Housing monitoring report, and though the initial focus will be on capacity analysis, a list of exemptions will be provided after the fourth year.

With the recommendations all approved, council returned to the closed meeting room for another 75 minutes. When they emerged, Guthrie reported that they gave direction to staff on the “Neeve Street Parking Lot – Development Opportunity” adding that this was all he was able to say about this item for now.

Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.

The next meeting is planning meeting of council on Wednesday March 4 at 10 am. You can see the agendas on the City’s website here.