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Caren Burcher 2025 Budget Delegation

DELEGATION TO BURLINGTON COUNCIL – NOVEMBER 4 TH, 2024

Hello, my name is Caren Burcher and I am a member of the Burlington Residents’ Action Group.

I am here today to discuss HR Expenses at COB.

I reviewed the last 3 Budgets from 2022 to 2024 and now the 2025 proposed budget. There are no Org Charts listed in any of these budgets or, that I can find, on the city’s website. There are no job descriptions or required qualifications listed for any staff member employed at the City of Burlington. The salaries being paid to city staff are going up at a far higher rate than the rate of inflation which is presently 1.6%.

There is a rumour going around that the City of Burlington has no formal review process of staff job performance for any staff member. 

I believe the city should provide an Org Chart listing the Job Descriptions and qualifications for each city staff position and that org chart should be posted on the city website. 

How does the city justify these above-inflation raises without job descriptions, qualifications and formal performance reviews?

After all, taxpayers in Burlington pay for these salaries, benefits and pensions.

Wages and Benefits:

We compared salary increases for the fiscal year 2023 from the Annual Report and compared it to the budget for 2024 and 2025.

The increase for 2024 is 11%, and the increase for 2025 is 6.97% for a cumulative 2-year increase of 18.74%.

According to the Ontario.ca/collective bargaining the average increase for public sector workers in Ontario ranged from 2.5% to 4%.

According to the Ontario Sunshine list the average wage increases in the City of Burlington was 6.3%; the average wage increase in Oakville was 2.3%.

For example: 

The salary for the CFO in Burlington in 2023 was $254,146; an increase of 8.5%  in 2023 over 2022.

Town of Oakville – the salary for the Commissioner of Corporate Services and Treasurer is $242,790; an increase of 3.8% in 2023 over 2022.

City employees are enrolled in the OMERS Pension.

The “Salary Paid” in the Sunshine list does not include the cost of non-taxable benefits such as pension plan contributions paid for by the City of Burlington.

The city pays one dollar for every dollar the employee contributes to the pension plan. The more the employee earns in wages, the more the city contributes to the OMERS pension. The public sector is drifting farther and farther away from the reality of the private sector taxpayers with generous above-inflation raises and defined Pension Plans.

The 2023 Burlington Sunshine list data shows 59 employees with “manager” in their titles. The average in 2023 for this group showed 59 people earned $137,544.

Contrasting this with the private sector the website indeed.com reports the average manager in Toronto has a base salary of $95,154.

The average private sector salary increases are between 1.5 to 2.0%

The City of Burlington must take into account what their private sector residents are earning. Our property taxes in Burlington since 2022 have gone up by 27.4% and with this increase may rise by almost 37%. Residents are already stressed with mortgages, rents, inflated food costs etc. And these massive tax increases must stop. and be reduced for 2025.

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