IT doesn't appear Terrace will be northern B.C.'s first Living Wage city any time soon as a resolution regarding the issue was postponed once again with no date set for revisiting the proposal.
"It will be on the table for a hundred years," said councillor Marylin Davies.
This winter a UNBC student group lead by undergraduate Devin Pollitt and professor Robert Hart asked council to become a living wage employer which means they would commit to paying all employees a minimum salary of $17.56 an hour and to ensure contractors and subcontractors were also paid that much.
The figure comes from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives think tank and is based on calculations on what a family of four needs for a no-frill lifestyle with both parents working and assuming each works 35 hours a week.
The only exemptions would include students on co-op placements and jobs that take less than one hour to complete.
The proposal asks council to adopt the policy by March 1, 2014.
City corporate administrator Alisa Thompson provided council with a report requested in March 2013 concluding that "there would be some significant budgetary impacts to consider if council chooses to adopt such a policy."
The city's library, which currently operates at $500,000 annually, much of which already goes into salaries, would incur a significant cost increase, Thompson said.
Another municipal institution that would have to increase its salary budge significantly is the Heritage Park Museum. It has a number of seasonal employees who make significantly less that $17.65.
Currently there are only three positions directly at the city which are paid less than the living wage formula.
Pollitt had said during his March presentation to council that the living wage policy assumes employers will benefit from greater productivity.
Bruce Bidgood, who ran for council with this policy as part of his platform during the 2011 general local election, said that the recommendation from the administration's report was not specific enough.
Councillor Marilyn Davies also expressed dismay at the lack of detail provided in the report presented by the administration.
"I thought we had asked for the criteria. I cannot support it as it stands," said Davies.
Adding to the debate, councillor James Cordeiro said that "If I had to pay my dishwasher $17.65 they'd be out of a job," adding that he can't support the proposal given what seems an overestimated living wage.
The bone of contention is the spreadsheet formula used to arrive at the hourly wage for a given region. Several council members found it odd that Terrace's living wage was only about two dollars less than Vancouver's.
One suggestion from council was to go over the university students' findings with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Cordeiro said he thinks there might be a bias there, musing that he would like see what formula the Fraser Institute, a more right-leaning group, would come up with.
"There must be a reason why only one municipality has adopted the program," Councillor Downie said.
Council had been told that three other similar municipalities including Cranbrook, Williams Lake, and Esquimalt were living wage municipalities, but upon further investigation it seemed that only Cranbrook had accepted it, and only at a community level. New Westminster appears to be the only municipality to have fully adopted the policy in the province.
The discussion seemed to unravel with councillors split on checking the students' with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives while others remained critical, saying they were worried about placing a burden on businesses and on taxpayers.
Mayor David Pernarowski mentioned having a meeting with the students themselves.