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The decision on a mandatory mask bylaw for Regina is going to have to wait a few more days.
Regina city council couldn’t get through a lengthy agenda in one sitting Wednesday, and the mask bylaw was one of the issues that couldn’t be addressed in the time allotted.
Council will reconvene again shortly, possibly Friday or Monday, with hopes of dealing with the mask bylaw.
Council voted to expedite the process, moving the bylaw from being a notice of motion to be an actual debate and voting topic.
“It is important to bump it to this month as opposed to bumping it to next month to discuss it,” Mayor Michael Fougere said after the meeting.
“We will see what that mandatory bylaw looks like. We won’t actually have it in place; we will need to have a bylaw come back. How it looks and operates, we will see what that looks like.”
While masks will need to wait, council did get through a good portion of the agenda, including voting on compensation for councillors.
Council voted to increase the wages of future council members by 26.6 per cent. The change will be phased in over the next three years.
The increase would bring the annual salaries of councillors up to $57,660 from $45,442. The salary for the mayor will also increase, going from $144,832 to $151,015.
With a municipal election set for November, the changes in compensation will apply to 2021 council, not this one.
Coun. Mike O’Donnell, who isn’t seeking re-election this fall, said he is in favour of the wage increase even though he won’t benefit from it.
“My point of view always has been the notion of attracting new people, giving people a chance to be on council and taking any financial difficulty away from that,” O”Donnell said.
He added he thinks the raises could make serving the public more attractive to people who are interested in being on council.
“We need to make sure that folks are encouraged, especially at this time, to run for council,” O’Donnell said.
Keith Comstock, executive-in-residence with the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, was part of the study and report that was presented to council recommending the wage increase.
The increase in wages would put Regina at median when compared to councils of cities that are a similar size in Canada. Comstock said compensation should not dissuade people from running for council.
The last time there was a salary review done was in 2001. A bylaw indicated a review needed to be done every second council after that, but there haven’t been any done since.
In 2018, Revenue Canada changed rules around what portion of a councillor’s salary could be claimed as tax free and salaries changed to compensate for that.
The motion passed by an 8-3 margin.
Fougere voted against the wage increase, saying the middle of a pandemic is not the time to do it.
“We have a health crisis and probably the worst issue in a generation. We have financial uncertainty (and) we’ve had people losing their businesses, maybe losing their jobs and financial difficulties,” Fougere said.
“We don’t know where we’re going to stand financially in September when we collect all our taxes. It just seems to me this is not the message we should be sending right now.”
Council also voted in favour of renaming City Square Plaza after former mayor Pat Fiacco. He was mayor of the city from 2000 to 2012.
“I think that Pat’s contributions to the city in so many different ways were substantial and long-lasting and this is a rightful legacy for him so (I’m) very, very pleased that we passed it,” Fougere said.