The mayor of Amos voted against his pay rise

Photo courtesy City of Amos
Sébastien D’astous, mayor

David Prince

Tuesday, 20 march 2018, 10:26

UPDATE
Tuesday, 20 march 2018, 10:26

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AMOS | The mayor of Amos voted against his pay rise by 36.5 %. According to him, it was justified, but had not been explained to the population.

Sébastien D’astous, mayor of Amos, said to have received many comments from citizens since the beginning of the month of February, after the municipality had proposed to increase his salary 64 455 $ to $ 88,000, in addition to an expense allowance of 16 595 $.

“The increase was justified and justifiable. But there has been a lack of communication with the citizens. We will listen to what people have told us before to come back with another regulation,” said Mr. D’astous, who had voted against the increase, this has had the effect of cancelling the proposed regulations.

The City of Amos will start the process with a comparative analysis of the salaries of the mayors of different cities of Quebec. A new draft law will be presented in a few weeks.

“There are people who would prefer that the elected officials earn zero. But it has more responsibilities than before. In addition, the federal government will now impose the allocation of expenses of elected officers. The impact on the budget will be minor, and it is this that we must explain better to citizens”, said Mr. D’astous.

Before proposing the increase in salary of elected officials, the Town of Amos, had carried out a comparison with the other cities in the Abitibi region. The mayor Of’astous agrees that the City may be stuck with this type of comparison.

“We’re going to redo the exercise. I can’t tell you if, in the next regulation, the increase will be 30, 20 or 15 per cent over four years”, he said.