TNRD Board raises its 2025 pay by 2.6 per cent
CFJC Today File Photo
Feb 23, 2025 | 7:38 PM
Victor Kaisar
Thompson-Nicola Regional District (TNRD) Directors have voted to give themselves a 2.6 per cent pay increase retroactive to January 1 of this year.
Board Chair Barbara Roden made that motion during Thursday’s (Feb. 20) meeting.
“I would like to move that the board approve a Jan. 1, 2025 annual change to remuneration at 2.6 per cent, representing CPI (Consumer Price Index) for the year 2024,” Roden, who is also mayor of Ashcroft said.
The motion, which was seconded by Clearwater mayor Merlin Blackwell, was not debated before it was voted upon. Cache Creek mayor John Ranta was the only one who voted against the motion Thursday.
This year’s increase in remuneration for TNRD Directors is down from the four per cent increase the board gave itself last year and the year before. It is also below the three year average of the B.C. CPI, which is 4.5 per cent.
The TNRD’s Board Remuneration Bylaw stipulates that if that three year average is more than four per cent, then all pay increases for board members need to be reviewed before it can be approved. It also says that if there is no increase or if there is a decline in the average CPI, then board remuneration will not change “unless otherwise determined.”
Thursday’s vote means that in 2025 TNRD Electoral Area Directors will be paid $32,230 (up from $31,414), while Municipal Directors will get $18,140 (up from $17,680). The Chair and Vice-Chair will take home an extra $30,296 and $6,123 respectively, while Alternate Directors will get $175 for every meeting they attend.
Those salaries are approximate, as the TNRD says its payroll department still needs to finalize those numbers based on the board’s vote.
According to TNRD staff, these pay raises will cost taxpayers less than first anticipated, as the 2025 provisional budget was prepared assuming a four per cent increase to board pay, which would have amounted to an extra $30,000 in compensation compared to last year.
“If there was a better way of figuring out what politicians should be paid, we would happily take it because the optics of being the ones who not only decide what your pay rise should be but then the ones who vote on it, those optics are terrible,” Roden told CFJC in 2023, when the TNRD board made changes to its remuneration bylaw.
“But as I say, it’s the system that we have and no one has managed to come up with a better one.”
At that time, Roden said TNRD elected officials were making less than others in similarly sized B.C. regional districts.
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