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However, Thursday it emerged that Farkas’s statement may have been partially correct, and the city is now scrambling to reconcile comments made by the CFO with administration’s actual practice when it comes to calculating salaries.

In an email sent to council members and the mayor Thursday morning, the CFO apologized for the “confusion” on council remuneration.

“I am sorry that there is some confusion around how council members’ compensation is calculated,” wrote Carla Male.

She went on to say that since 2012, the city’s human resources department has used a formula to calculate annual changes to council pay based on a 12-month average of Alberta’s average weekly earnings.

Male said her suggestion that council pay would decrease was based on a different policy, one that made a simpler September-to-September comparison of weekly earnings.

“It is obviously essential that we determine which documents accurately reflect council’s most recent decision on this topic,” Male wrote, adding that she hopes to investigate further and return with a report to council in the new year.

Finalized wage numbers for the fall were released by Statistics Canada on Thursday.

The formula used in past years by the city, and cited by Farkas, would yield a pay bump of 2.37 per cent in 2019, increasing councillor salaries from $113,325 to $116,011.

Postmedia reached out to the city’s finance department for comment. In a statement, the CFO would only say that “the figures for the annual adjustment for members of council remuneration require verification” and that she has requested an “examination” of the recent practices.