Persistence has paid off for city councillor Kirk Cameron.

On Monday evening, for the third consecutive council meeting, Cameron made a motion to amend the council remuneration bylaw to raise the stipend paid for councillors to attend meetings.

While he eventually withdrew that motion, his sentiments found support amongst five of his council colleagues to adopt an hourly wage of $50 for the meetings instead of a fixed stipend.

That rate would be paid up to eight hours at a time.

The motion for an hourly rate came from Coun. Ted Laking, who had previously broached the concept during one of the debates initiated by Cameron.

On Monday evening, Laking’s motion broke the impasse.

The discussion, however, grew heated, particularly between Cameron and Coun. Dan Boyd, who sternly rejected the idea, as he has in previous weeks.

Mayor Laura Cabott also voted against the idea, echoing many of Boyd’s points that councillors’ annual remuneration of nearly $42,000 is more than adequate payment for the work they do. All councillors should have accepted that when they decided to run for office, she added.

Cameron said the higher pay rates were a “drop in the bucket” and “insignificant” for council, which is essentially running a “$100-million business.”

In what sounded like a sarcastic tone, Cameron said he was “really sorry he had brought this up.

“It’s not where we should be spending any time,” he said. “This isn’t really a significant impact.”

That didn’t sit well with Boyd, who appeared to be growing increasingly frustrated as the meeting went on.

“This is going to be at least a couple of hundred a day more from what we now pay,” Boyd said.

“Do we have the budget to cover this? It’s not peanuts.”

He chastised his colleagues for their “cavalier” attitude toward the question. Moments later, he retracted that description as Cameron complained about the term.

“We are not cavalier,” he said, rising on a point of order put to Cabott.

“I’ll withdraw ‘cavalier,’” Boyd conceded.

“But the point is, if we cannot keep track of the smaller amounts of money, what faith would anybody have that we would be managing the larger pots of money in a proper fashion?

“We don’t know what this is going to cost. We chose to wait and bring it up at the 11th hour of the third reading of the bylaw. It’s just fundamentally wrong.”

Boyd continued to argue his point.

“I’m a little nervous about doing without having some analysis done on what we will be doing here on what the cost will be.

“Administration has done no analysis on the numbers we have pulled out of the air tonight, and I’m just not ready to support this type of change,” Boyd said.

“We’ve been working on this for a couple of months now. This wasn’t proposed then. I don’t understand the implications of making this change well enough,” Boyd said.

Cabott said it was unfortunate that this debate came up “so late in the day.

“There was plenty of opportunity to propose any type of changes to this bylaw,” she pointed out.

“Frankly, I think the (payment) is generous. You get that remuneration whether you show up to meetings or not.

“This is an extra, and I personally think this is not the time in these financial times to ask for money for what we are already getting paid for.

“Money is tight, and there are many things this council wants to do, and it’s not to pay ourselves extra,” the mayor said.

Coun. Jocelyn Curteneau was one councillor in support of Laking’s idea.

“Many councillors have other business we need to attend to,” she said. “It’s just not good value for money to waste this time.”

The motion passed, with only Boyd and Cabott rejecting it.

The bylaw is now approved.