Mayor, councillors challenged to freeze their paycheques. Not a chance!

Ward 4 Coun. Stephan Kinach found himself lonely as a single sock in a laundry sack last night when he proposed freezing the wages of Mayor Matthew Shoemaker and all city councillors.

Kinach introduced a motion that also would have frozen the paycheques of every non-union employee of the city.

That, he said, would reduce the city's 2024 operating budget by $428,906.

But Kinach's council colleagues were unsupportive of this idea for reducing the levy increase.

When Mayor Shoemaker asked whether anyone was willing to second Kinach's motion, he got nothing but 15 seconds of crickets and had no choice but to move on to other business.

Sault Ste. Marie went on to approve an overall municipal levy of $141 million, adding up to a 4.84 per cent levy increase for local ratepayers.

The city's portion of the 2024 municipal levy will be up just 1.45 per cent from 2023.

The levies and local boards portion, over which the city has limited or no control, was up 3.39 per cent.

Even though councillors were unwilling to freeze council paycheques, they did agree with a motion by Ward 4 Coun. Lisa Vezeau-Allen to slash special funds available to Mayor Shoemaker and council by $20,000.

The $35,000 provided for use at council's discretion will be cut to $15,000 this year.

Mayor Shoemaker pointed out that the special funds account has been "underspent many years in a row."

"It's a reasonable budget line to reduce," the mayor said.

Councillors did agree this week to add some new staff to the city payroll.

A new bylaw enforcement officer and a supervisor of building/bylaw will be added to the city's engineering budget.

Council also voted to increase its funding of Sault Ste. Marie Public Library by $36,000 to provide needed security at the downtown library.