Stirling adopts pay rise for elected members

THE City of Stirling’s mayor and councillors have received a pay increase.

The Salaries and Allowances Tribunal allowed in April a 1 per cent increase in remuneration, which could be adopted at each council’s discretion.

The council endorsed the changes at its June meeting, which will have annual meeting attendance fees rise by $470 for the mayor and $313 for councillors.

The annual mayoral allowance will increase by $889 to $89,753 and $222 to $22,438 for the Deputy Mayor.

Political ties remain hot topic

At the same meeting, councillor Elizabeth Re called for a change to the entitlements policy, which dictates elected members fly business class to conferences and awards ceremonies.

Cr Re believed flights should be in economy class and members could pay for upgrades to business class or have the money taken from their networking allowance, but she failed to get support from colleagues.

The policy was amended to include the provision of a vehicle for the mayor to conduct council business.

Waste cost rises a long-term gain

Cr Re also sought to limit the amount the chief executive could spend on legal consultants without council approval to $50,000 instead of $150,000, which she said would be more “transparent”.

Cr David Boothman argued there had not been any problems with the current system and councillors could query any items when they received their monthly report.

Governance services director Jamie Blanchard said the City had reduced its spending on legal consultants’ fees in the past year, with more than $250,000 spent in the year prior to April 2018 but only $70,000 spent to April 2019.