Essex town council to get pay bump

Essex Town Council at a regular meeting at Essex Town Hall on June 17, 2024. (Rich Garton/CTV News Windsor)

Town council in Essex is getting a pay raise after a consultant’s report identified the councillors wages fell below the 60th percentile for comparator municipalities.

The town hired a consultant to perform a salary review and determined councillors should be compensated based on a scale that pays them in the range of similar-sized municipalities like LaSalle, Kingsville and Tecumseh.

That means the mayor will be getting a 6.1 per cent raise to $49,854.

The deputy mayor will get a 4.7 per cent bump to $35,162 and councillors will receive a 3.7 per cent raise to $28,024.

Council endorsed a policy which will see a salary review every four years.

Two councillors, Joe Garon and Jason Matyi, voted against the increase.

The town’s chief administrative officer Doug Sweet says the key objective was setting a policy so council doesn’t get caught in a political decision every time the discussion comes up.

“That was one of our main goals for administration was to take the political side out of it,” said Sweet. “It should be something where you do comparators we do it with their non union staff, and it's a common practice so we wanted to get where it was truly objective with third party consultant.”