Remuneration reporting for members of Haliburton County council will change next year to include expenses accrued on the municipality’s corporate credit cards expenses that are not captured under the current reporting system.
'“Going forward next year . . . we are going to adopt a best practice which will be to report what’s paid and also what’s paid for” said treasurer Elaine Taylor during a March 21 council meeting.
Algonquin Highlands Mayor Carol Moffatt asked for further explanation on what that meant.
“This year’s report is only reporting what we paid to each of the council members and each of the committee members” Taylor said. “Next year’s is going to report everything we paid to you and everything we paid for you.”
“Like what?” Moffatt asked.
“Conferences that’s what seems to be missing from here so anything that we put on a corporate credit card for conferences is missing” Taylor said. “Really in total if I was to estimate what’s left off of this there’s roughly four councillor payments of approximately $1000 for conferences that would be missing from this report this year and also approximately $4000 for the warden for conferences and other things attended.”
Councillors accepted the remuneration report for 2017 during the meeting.
Minden Hills Mayor Brent Devolin who was warden for the year received just more than $20000 in per diem payments and had just more than $1900 in mileage payments for a total of approximately $22750. Algonquin Highlands Deputy Mayor Liz Danielsen had remuneration and expenses totalling approximately $13500; Dysart et al Deputy Mayor Andrea Roberts about $13300; Dysart et al Mayor Murray Fearrey and Highlands East Deputy Mayor Suzanne Partridge each had totals around $12900; Minden Hills Deputy Mayor Cheryl Murdoch approximately $11800; Algonquin Highlands Mayor Carol Moffatt approximately $11600; and Highlands East Mayor Dave Burton had total per diem payments and expenses of about $10600.
Citizen members of the county’s advisory committees also receive per diem and mileage payments those payments totalling approximately $8000 for the year.