Metro Vancouver chair defends voting in favour of $65K retirement bonus

Port Coquitlam Mayor and Metro Vancouver chair Greg Moore admits voting to give himself a retroactive retirement bonus of $64,500 may not sit well with people.

"I get it," he said. "People make comments like, 'I wish I got to choose how much I get paid.' I don't think there is a good way to do this. It's one of the probably worst parts of our job to look at our own remuneration."

Last Friday, the Metro Vancouver board of directors voted in favour of giving each director a retirement bonus of 10.2 per cent per year, retroactive to 2007. 

Moore told CBC Radio's On the Coast that the change means he'll be collecting an extra $50,000 to $55,000 when he retires later this year, however staff at Metro Vancouver later confirmed the actual amount to be $64,500.  

At least seven of the 39 directors present at the meeting voted against the motion, including Coquitlam Coun. Terry O'Neill. 

"To go back in time more than a decade and calculate [the retirement bonus] from some arbitrary date, 2007, and give it to the people who are leaving now, I just could not abide by something like that." 

"People expect public servants to truly serve the public, not serve themselves,"  said O'Neill.

Only six of Metro Vancouver's 21 member municipalities offer retirement benefits for local politicians — Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey, New Westminster, Richmond, Belcarra and Anmore.

Moore defended the bonus as one way of giving incentive to people who want to serve, but who may be reluctant to leave a job to do so.

"Ultimately we want to make sure that we're making [politics] attractive and that was part of the process that we went through," he said. 

15% salary increase

The board also voted to give each member a 15 per cent salary increase in 2019 to offset a recent change in the federal budget that took away a tax break for elected officials.

According to meeting documents, Metro Vancouver's Finance and Intergovernmental Committee — which is chaired by Vancouver city Coun. Raymond Louie, and of which Moore is the vice chair — was involved in bringing forward the two new pay schemes. 

Moore earns $77,474 per year as Metro Vancouver chair while Louie is paid $38,737 for serving as Metro Vancouver's vice chair. 

The estimated cost of implementing the retirement bonus scheme is half a million dollars, with an annual cost going forward of $62,500.

Th cost of the 2019 wage increase is estimated at $130,000.

O'Neill, who sits on the Metro Vancouver Performance and Audit Committee, says he intends to bring the retirement bonus up at a future meeting. 

"I want some more details because I'm uncomfortable with the results of the vote," he said. "We can't turn the clock back on it ... but I want to make sure we take a close look at the financial implications for Metro."

With files from CBC Radio's On the Coast