As required by Ontario’s Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act, the City of Greater Sudbury is providing a list of employees whose salaries exceeded $100,000 during 2004.  34 individuals fell into this category.

“Being competitive with the market rates as an employer is important for attracting and retaining highly skilled and talented professionals,” explained the City’s Chief Administrative Officer, Mark Mieto.  “The municipality is proud of the high quality people employed at all levels in Greater Sudbury and regularly examines salaries of comparable cities when setting pay levels.”

Mark Mieto also explained that City union and non-union employees, excluding Police Services and the Senior Management Team, receive annual pay increases of 3%.  However, salary increases in 2004 were affected by a number of irregularities.  “When comparing with previous years, there is a perception that pay increases were higher than 3% because of an extra pay period,” explained Mr. Mieto.  “Due to the pay dates on the 2004 calendar, City staff were provided with 27 pay periods, rather than the standard 26 payments. This accounts for almost 4% of the increase from the previous year.”

Another one-time increase was due to retroactive payments.  More than half of the 34 people on this list received retroactive payments, ranging from $5,000 to $28,000.  “Since the 2001 amalgamation, the City has been conducting a review of all management positions under a job evaluation plan.  “In certain cases the City has been obligated to provide retroactive pay to those whose jobs had been undervalued initially,” explained Patrick Thomson, the City’s Director of Human Resources and Organizational Development.  “The majority of the job evaluation task was completed in 2004 and in some cases, employees received a retroactive pay for 3.5 years in one year,” added Mr. Thomson.

“We need to strike a balance between attracting high quality people who can make our City stronger and remain as fiscally efficient as possible,” said Mr. Mieto. “Salary levels that are comparable to our municipal comparators are key to attracting and retaining competent and leading edge employees.”

The following is the list of municipal employees who earned $100,000 or more in 2004.

Media contact:

Ghislain Lamothe
Manager of Corporate Communications and French-language Services
City of Greater Sudbury
671-CITY (2489) ext. 4507