Essex County Council approves pay increase for alternates [Video]

Members of Essex County Council voted Wednesday evening to increase the pay for their alternates.

Alternate members step in when a councillor is unable to attend a meeting. For example, if Essex Mayor Sherry Bondy is unavailable, town councillor Kim Verbeek substitutes for her.

Prior to this week’s meeting, alternates were paid $110.77 per meeting. The new rate is $260 per meeting, retroactive to January 1, and will come out of the salary of the councillor they are replacing.

This decision came after nearly 45 minutes of discussion and follows last month’s contentious vote by councillors to raise their own salaries by 137 per cent.

“The alternates should determine for themselves and find out how difficult it is to actually vote an increase for your position,” Essex County Warden Hilda MacDonald said, referencing an alternate member who was apparently “angry” after the June vote to raise salaries.

“He was quite …