TNRD Chair Barbara Roden (Image Credit: CFJC News)

By Sydney Chisholm

thompson nicola regional district

TNRD Board of Directors votes itself a pay raise

Nov 27, 2023 | 6:15 PM

KAMLOOPS – The Thompson Nicola Regional District (TNRD) Board of Directors voted in favour of a pay raise for its board members.

At Thursday’s (Nov. 23) meeting, the board approved a four per cent wage increase retroactive to January 1, 2023. In addition, a one-time increase to annual wages was approved, effective Jan. 1, 2024.

Board Chair Barbara Roden said no one on the board wants to be voting on their own raises but it is something that has to be done.

“If there was a better way of figuring out what politicians should be paid, we would happily take it because the optics of being the ones who not only decide what your pay rise should be but then the ones who vote on it, those optics are terrible,” said Roden. “But as I say, it’s the system that we have and no one has managed to come up with a better one.”

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According to Roden, TNRD officials are making less than others in similarly sized B.C. regional districts.

The chair said the approved motion brings the TNRD remuneration on par with other regional districts across the province. Area directors will see a 15 per cent pay rise while municipal directors will see their pay go up eight per cent.

The decision to avoid pay increases during the pandemic is a contributor to the increase of four per cent now.

According to the TNRD report, the increase is lower than the consumer price index for 2022 which was 6.9 per cent and often used as a guideline for politician wage increases.

Roden believes an increase is important to recruit quality candidates into municipal roles.

“It’s not a living wage. You’re not even making minimum wage for the work that you do,” she said. “And people look at that and they say, ‘Well, if I go into local politics, I can’t support a family on that wage. I have to have a second job.’ Really, we want to remove barriers and get people into local politics — good people into local politics.”