Mayor wants to donate part of his salary to match that of his counterpart in Calgary.
Edmonton City Council will receive a pay raise this year.
That means Mayor Amarjeet Sohi will earn $223,000 in 2025, and he has pledged to give some of that away.
For the past two decades, an independent committee of city council has set their salaries.
Each salary change is based in part on the average weekly wage in Alberta, as reported by Statistics Canada.
Since 2017, the annual salary of a city councilor has increased from about $13,000 to $126,000, while the mayor's compensation has increased by about $23,000. Mayor Sohi will earn about $3,000 more than Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek this year, which Sohi says is not normal.
"We work in the same political context, we have the same intergovernmental responsibilities and we have the same level of complexity in running both cities because we are similar in size," Sohi told CTV News Edmonton on Wednesday.
Sohi plans to donate the difference in salary to the city in some way.
He said that while $3,000 won't have a significant impact on Edmonton's budget, he thought it was important to address public concerns that he earned more than Gondek.
It's not yet clear how the donation will work or what kind of impact the $3,000 could have on the city's billion-dollar budget. City councillor Keren Tang told CTV News Edmonton she was concerned the mayor's decision would politicise the process.
"As well-intentioned as a proposal may be, I think the biggest impact is the integrity of the process that we have put in place," said Tang, who represents the Karhiio district.
As for the six-figure salaries councillors are earning this year, Tang believes it's fair based on the extra effort they put in outside of their regular working hours.
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