Currently, the selection is based on budget, employee size and population. An additional criterion should be added – Municipal structure. Municipal structure, along with number of employees within the organization, are the two most important criteria for identifying good job matches. Upper tiered Municipalities often do not have appropriate matches because of how job duties are organized because of differing responsibilities in engineering, social services and cultural services. Single tier municipalities can be appropriate depending on the number of FTEs employed. As some traditional comparators experience exponential growth, it is incumbent for us to pause and ask if they are still an appropriate comparator.”

During the Committee meeting, held February 12, 2019, the Consultant recommended that Mississauga be removed as a comparator municipality and be replaced with Guelph. In an effort to maintain consistency and the same methodology, the Consultant further recommended that only one municipality be changed at this time

The Consultant advised that this change better aligns the City of Windsor to comparator municipalities when looking at such criteria as population, budget, number of employees and corporate structure. Furthermore, given its close proximity to Toronto it is very much influenced by the Greater Toronto Area.

The City of Guelph was recommended as a replacement comparator city to Mississauga by the consultant for the following reasons:

As it relates to the Salary Market Review, the more closely aligned the structures of the comparator municipalities, the more accurate position matches the Consultant is able to make, providing a greater data set for comparison purposes. Following a discussion with the Committee, it was agreed to proceed with the Consultant’s recommendation to replace Mississauga with Guelph and to forward the recommendation to Council for consideration.

Comparator Positions

In order to assess market adjustments from one survey to the next, the same base group of comparator positions has been used from survey to survey. Prior to the commencement of the 2013-2014 salary market review a number of comparator positions were changed, through council resolution CR137/2015. Due to corporate restructuring at the time, a number of comparator positions were reclassified which led to some salary bands being over represented within the comparators which led to a review of the positions.