Ballem top wage earner in 2014. City of Vancouver spent $431 million on salaries, releases list of employees earning over $75,000

City Manager Penny Ballem topped the list of wage earners at the City with a salary of $334,617 and she reported $2,033 in expenses in 2014. After Ballem, Francie Connell (Legal Services) was second at $294,244 on the list of City of Vancouver employees who earned $75,000 or more in 2014. Planning Chief Brian Jackson ($288,015), Housing Czar Mukhtar Latif ($284,393), and Financial Services GM Patrice Impey ($274,211) rounded off the top 5 wage earners.

The City of Vancouver released a list of employees who earned over $75,000 as part of a 2014 Financial Statement that will be reviewed in Council on Tuesday, April 28th. The City spent a total of $431,281,282 on employee salaries and expenses in 2014, this is up from $418,935,384 in 2013. The records indicate that 2,166 City employees earned over $75,000 last year.

Is salary tied to performance? It might be worth reviewing an article in 24hours from last year (Vancouver: the slowest FOI in Canada, Jeremy Nuttall, June 4, 2014). According to 24hours, Newspapers Canada ranked the City as “the worst in the country in terms of speed” for Freedom of Information Requests and “Vancouver was given an F grade by the audit for speed and was mediocre when it came to disclosure.” Barbara Van Fraassen the Director, Access to Information nonetheless took home $117,757 in 2014.

The figures for salaries and expenses are embedded in a PDF document and hence are unfortunately not published in a spreadsheet format (i.e. not Open Data friendly). In order to make the data more accessible, we’ve taken the time to extract the salary data from the staff report. It’s available ‘as is’ for download in a spreadsheet file: 2014_salaries_CoV_75k_plus.

The financial report also contains information the  $692,071,342 that was allocated to suppliers, and includes a list of suppliers with orders totalling over $25,000. Cultural grants, BIA allocations, Council and Park Board salaries are also included in the 2014 Statement of Financial Information. Most Councillors made a base salary of around $70,000; the City’s report does not include additional remuneration from Metro Vancouver.

Here’s a list of the top 12 wage earners at the City of Vancouver:

Name	Remuneration	Expenses	Total
Ballem, Penny	334,617	2,033	336,650
Connell, Francie	294,244	–	294,244
Jackson, Brian	288,015	592	288,607
Latif, Mukhtar	284,393	2,765	287,158
Impey, Patrice	274,211	4,921	279,132
Bromley, Malcolm	276,871	–	276,871
Johnston, Sadhu	266,781	644	267,425
Judd, Peter	265,175	689	265,864
Prosken, Brenda	234,059	315	234,374
Aujla, H B	230,906	3,288	234,194
McKearney, John	220,586	9,245	229,831
Dobrovolny, Jerry	217,406	9,097	226,503

Included below is a table of a cross section of Planning Staff salaries:

Name	Remuneration	Expenses	Total
Jackson, Brian	288,015	592	288,607
Pickering, Jane	159,991	1,011	161,002
Munro, Kent	148,875	1,350	150,225
McNaney, Kevin	145,497	645	146,142
Greer, John	141,570	–	141,570
Molaro, Anita	132,289	4,600	136,889
Johnson, Ben	112,624	–	112,624
D’Agostini, Marco	112,448	79	112,527
Naylor, Michael	111,936	–	111,936
Hiebert, Karis	111,849	927	112,776
Gordon, Michael	111,342	–	111,342
Pecarski, Randy	110,955	–	110,955
Hoese, Karen	110,927	–	110,927
Autiero, David	110,781	84	110,865
Black, Sailen	108,809	607	109,416
Drobot, Dwayne	105,367	1,000	106,367
Miller, Grant	102,323	–	102,323
Shillito, Matt	99,449	–	99,449
McGuire, Michelle	98,818	1,800	100,618
Lau, Cynthia	98,804	–	98,804
McNeill, Yardley	98,195	–	98,195
Robinson, Kirsten	98,152	–	98,152
Uyesugi, Joyce	97,860	347	98,207
Au, Michelle	96,252	–	96,252
Zeng, Yan	91,778	273	92,051
Lebreton, Wendy	89,796	–	89,796
Dobson, Cory	88,337	944	89,281
So, Mandy	87,692	–	87,692
McKay, Dean	83,084	–	83,084
Wroblewski, Andrew	80,131	–	80,131
Winterbottom, Graham	77,564	1,394	78,958

The following wage earners complete the top 25 (from number 13 to 25):

Name	Remuneration	Expenses	Total
Mochrie, Paul	218,273	–	218,273
Singh, S	206,155	3,366	209,521
Au, W	197,726	5,440	203,166
Lee, E	195,706	4,183	199,889
McDonald, M	196,299	–	196,299
Parkin, Ben	193,502	–	193,502
Naklicki, A	191,146	–	191,146
Stratton, N	187,529	1,247	188,776
Bradshaw, G	187,013	–	187,013
Drinovz, A L	184,706	550	185,256
Liljefors, Y	182,123	–	182,123
Dixon, I K	180,076	–	180,076
Liang, K	176,815	–	176,815

Data from 2013 is available in our previous post:
City staff salaries released for 2013. Suppliers list and financial breakdown (May 22, 2014)