Remuneration policy has been set for School District 83.
With a new five member board to be elected in the fall, secretary-treasurer Nicole Bittante reviewed 17 similar sized school districts and five local municipal councillor stipends, to bring two recommendations to official trustee Mike McKay for consideration.
She recommended that the base remuneration for trustee, effective Nov. 1, be $13,500 and that additional $3,000 be paid to the board chair and $1,500 to vice-chair.
Bittante used 17 similar sized school districts (enrolment between 4,000 and 10,000) as comparators, with two anomalies being removed (West Vancouver and New Westminister) as they paid their trustees in excess of $20,000. The remaining districts remuneration ranged from $11,000 to $16,392.
For further comparison she researched local councillor stipend amounts which ranged from the City of Enderby’s $8,500 to the City of Salmon Arm’s $22,100.
After approving the remuneration recommendation, McKay also approved the annual adjustment of trustee remuneration, effective Dec. 1st of each year beginning in 2019, be based on the BC Consumer Price Index change from the prior year.
Related: School District 83 budget jumps by $3 million
Policies Approved
Approval was given to a group of policies which will serve as guidelines to the new board, when it is elected in October.
McKay gave third reading and approval to Roles and Responsibilities of the Board, Board Delegation of Authority, Monitoring Board Performance, Trustee Attendance, Trustee Code of Conduct, Trustee Conflict of Interest, Trustee Remuneration and Expenses, Trustee Professional Development, Accumulated Operating Surplus (Reserve) and Budget Monitoring and Reporting.
McKay thanked all those involved for the work on getting the policies in place.
“It was important to do,” he said.
He added the new policies also help address recommendations in the Watson Report.
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