City council members debated lawmakers’ latest salary increase Tuesday evening during a committee meeting.

As is the tradition, councillors vote on pay raises – if any – a year before the next municipal election is called.

The last time there was a substantial increase in council salaries was in 2018, when it was decided the city’s mayor would earn more than $100,000 a year.

Meanwhile, the six councillors would receive just over $36,000 annually.

It was a major raise from the salary of $87,942 for the mayor and annual honouraria of $20,496 for councillors.

On Tuesday, city staff brought forward the proposed increases for this year.

According to a report presented to council, the proposed bylaw “slightly changes the formula used to determine salary increases, increases councillors’ travel budgets, streamlines the approval process for travel expenses, and increases councillors’ daily stipends.”

The new bylaw is required to be in place by Nov. 1.

“The arrangement in the existing bylaw is for base salaries to be adjusted by the average Consumer Price Index for Whitehorse (CPI) for the previous year, unless the CPI is a negative amount, in which case the rate of adjustment would be zero.

“Daily stipends for councillors will also be adjusted,” the report reads.

“Councillor stipends were last increased in 2012,” it adds.

“Councillors will see a modest increase in daily stipends from $100 to $150 for periods of between one and four hours, and from $150 to $200 for periods of four hours or more.”

The report continued, “Based on recent historical averages, the cost for this proposed increase to the daily stipends is estimated at approximately $1,785 per councillor per year, which would be an increase of approximately $564 a year per councillor over the average previous stipend amounts.”

Coun. Kirk Cameron was the most vocal councillor on that issue, saying he doesn’t believe the stipend increase is close to sufficient.

“Once we reach four hours, you’re taking me out of an entire day, whereas under four hours, I can shoehorn it in with other things I’m doing in life,” he said.

“Therefore the $150 makes sense to me for under four hours. Once you take out my entire day, $200 does not make up in any remote sense or give me recompence for the amount of effort I am putting in to contribute to city business.”

Cameron suggested the amount should be $400 to $500 for activities four hours and beyond.

“That’s a suggestion for consideration,” he told city staff.

Mayor Laura Cabott asked city staff to explain where they came up with the idea for the changes.

Staff said they had conducted comparisons with other municipalities to see how their council members were being paid and made adjustments to what they saw as the Yukon political landscape.

The formula also takes into account the way territorial MLAs are paid.

Cabott also noted that any changes being made will only come into effect for the next council sworn in after the fall 2024 elections.

In addition, several other updates are proposed to the bylaw to reflect increases in the costs of travel and to streamline approval processes, the report reads.

“Increases in the costs of travelling for city business have resulted in councillors using their entire travel budget, or not having sufficient annual funds.

“To reflect these increases, pro-posed bylaw 2023-21 provides for an increase to the total amount allocated for councillors’ travel expenses by $1,000 from $3,750 to $4,750 per councillor per year.”