Victoria will hire a chief of staff for Mayor Lisa Helps.
Victoria councillors have approved the hiring of a senior adviser for the mayor to be called head of strategy and operations, mayor’s office.
“I feel really nervous to ask council for this position. I’m not really good at asking for help but I really hope you say yes,” Helps said to her council colleagues during a budget session Friday.
“There are just so many opportunities that either are missed because I haven’t had the support for the last four years or worst yet that I’m just doing it myself and trying to double myself into two people,” Helps said.
Helps made headlines in 2015 after being elected to her first term when she announced she wouldn’t be hiring an executive assistant at a salary and benefit package of $98,774 a year.
A political position, the mayor’s executive assistant was a job created by Alan Lowe when he was mayor and continued by Dean Fortin when he was elected mayor.
Helps said in 2015 that she didn’t see the need for an executive assistant and that not hiring one would save the city $400,000 over the course of the term.
Helps, who herself received $104,000 in salary and filed expenses of $22,949 in 2017, recommended the new position pay $130,000 a year — which she called “an honest assessment of what it will take to get the kind of support that will help in my office.”
She said what she was proposing was not an executive assistant.
“This isn’t an assistant. This is high level executive like a head of operations and strategy in the mayor’s office,” Helps said.
Councillors approved the position but held off on setting the pay pending a staff report on comparable positions in other municipalities.
Coun. Ben Isitt, while supporting creation of the position, said $130,000 a year was too rich. He suggested a salary of about $90,000 and that instead of being a contract position, the job be a salaried position with benefits.
“I think if we look at comparators in the provincial public service, for example the assistant to the minister of finance, I believe gets somewhere in the range of $80,000 to $90,000 before benefits,” Isitt said. “It just seems excessive,” Isitt said of $130,000, noting that Victoria is a small city.
Helps said it’s true cities like Montreal, Edmonton or Calgary with chiefs of staff are larger “but I’m the mayor of the city of 85,000 and the mayor of the region of 300,000 people.”
Helps had recommended the position be filled by Jan. 7 on a four-year contract, terminating the day of the 2022 election, but council instead decided the position should be filled in January and reviewed as part of the 2021 budget process.
“There’s always controversy whenever anyone proposes adding staff to the mayor’s office or any political office and that’s understandable,” Coun. Marianne Alto said, adding that the hiring is defensible.
“This is a strategic adviser. This is a person who understands the philosophy, the strategic plan, the financial capacity of a corporation and is an adjunct of the leader of a corporation — not to take their place — but to fill in where necessary, to provide support and really be an adjunct to that position,” Alto said.
“I strongly believe this is necessary and this will help us as a city to be able to join in initiatives that are happening nation-wide and world-wide,” said Coun. Sharmarke Dubow.
