Whitewater Region council agreed to increase the cost to $2,500 from $1,000 for Renfrew County Human Resources manager Bruce Beakley to review council’s remuneration.
The increased cost is because no one volunteered to sit on a committee to help review the honourariums, noted Chief Administrative Officer Christine FitzSimons.
Mr. Beakley was going to guide the volunteers on the committee who would do the research work. There were advertisements for the three volunteers on this committee, but no one put in their application, she said.
If council wants to go forward with the review of the honourarium, it will have to pay Mr. Beakley. She said this isn’t the only person who could be hired, but Mr. Beakley is the only one who could be hired for this amount of money.
Councillor Charlene Jackson agreed with CAO FitzSimons that the expertise of Mr. Beakley is worth the expense.
“He’s very familiar with all of the councillor’s remuneration and what each individual councillor is also responsible for,” she said. “We’re getting a good bang for our buck.”
