Mayor wants to give back portion of salary to match what Calgary counterpart makes

Edmonton city council meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. (Jeremy Thompson/CTV News Edmonton)

Edmonton city council is getting a pay raise this year.

It means Mayor Amarjeet Sohi will make $223,000 in 2025, and he’s pledging to give some of it back.

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For the last couple of decades, a committee independent of city council has determined its salaries.

Any wage changes are partially based on Alberta’s average weekly earnings as reported by Statistics Canada.

Since 2017, the annual pay for a city councillor has gone up by about $13,000 to $126,000, while the mayor’s compensation has risen by about $23,000.

Mayor Sohi will make about $3,000 more than Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek this year, which Sohi says isn’t right.

“We work in the same political context, we have the same intergovernmental responsibilities, and we have the same level of complexity running both cities because we are of similar size,” Sohi told CTV News Edmonton on Wednesday.

Sohi plans to give the difference in salaries back to the city somehow.

He says while $3,000 won’t make a meaningful impact on Edmonton’s budget, he felt it was important to respond to concerns from the public that he was earning more than Gondek.

It’s not clear yet how that donation would work or what sort of impact $3,000 could have on the city’s multi-billion dollar budget.

City Coun. Keren Tang told CTV News Edmonton she’s worried the mayor’s move will politicize the process.

“However well intentioned a proposal might be, I think the bigger impact is the integrity of a process that we have set out,” said Tang, who represents Ward Karhiio.

As for the six-figure salary councillors will earn this year, Tang figures it’s fair based on the extra effort they put in outside of typical work hours.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Jeremy Thompson