Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West is proposing Metro Vancouver Regional District’s board of directors slash their stipends by more than half as the government prepares to hand out, on average, to each household in the region this spring.
West said the proposed change to the remuneration bylaw tabled on Jan.31 is scheduled to be debated at the next board meeting, on Feb. 28.
This is what West envisions:
First, meeting stipends would be cut in half, from the current $547 per meeting.
West then proposes reducing the total number of Metro Vancouver meetings for which a stipend is paid by a minimum of 50 per cent from 2024 totals.
Metro Vancouver directors (comprised of appointed municipal council members) would also lose their bonus double pay for meetings that extend past four hours.
As well, West wants to reduce the total number of Metro Vancouver committees by a minimum of 50 per cent.
Additionally, West seeks to end the practice of automatically adjusting remuneration based on regional municipal salary increases.
Overall, the proposal calls to create a total limit on director remuneration.
West also seeks to have the board “consider alternatives to meeting stipend model of remuneration and any further changes as desired by the board.”
Next, West wants to “initiate a full-scale, external core service review” of Metro Vancouver to identify savings, including from staff and contractors, and to review “Metro Vancouver’s role as a regulator, identifying areas of duplicatory or overlapping municipal, regional, provincial and federal regulation and delegated authorities from the provincial and federal governments which may be uploaded back.”
The proposals come amid sustained criticism from the public and reporting on expenses and salaries by Glacier Media and Global News, since the regional government announced in March 2024 that the North Shore wastewater treatment plant project is nearly $3 billion over budget.
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With tangible capital assets of $8.49 billion to oversee, Metro Vancouver paid its board of directors $1.61 million in 2023.
By comparison, with tangible capital assets of $8.28 billion to oversee, the City of Vancouver paid its council $1.31 million.
Last year, the City of Calgary, as another example, paid its council about $1.9 million to manage $20.3 billion of assets.
West himself took home $53,436 from Metro Vancouver, in addition to his Port Coquitlam salary of $142,000.
Travel expenses for directors also reached record highs with so-called educational trips to Australia, Singapore and Netherlands over the past two years.
Last year, the board ended travel for itself and staff.
