Fewer politicians, bigger paycheques.

A veteran London city councillor is reviving debate about whether council should be a full-time position with an equivalent salary.

Working as a councillor the past decade, deputy mayor Paul Hubert said he’s seen firsthand how the job has become more demanding.

Councillors are asked to sit on more working groups and task forces, he said. City politicians are interacting more than ever with constituents and the public through social media. Many also represent London at conferences.

Now it’s time for council to adjust, said Hubert, who’s proposing sweeping changes.

They include shrinking city council, altering ward boundaries, paying councillors a full-time salary and holding committee meetings during the day.

“So it’s really about focus, it’s about efficiency and it’s about effectiveness,” said Hubert, who sent a letter to council’s strategic priorities and policy committee outlining his reasons and suggestions.

Hubert, who represents Ward 8, wants to consult the public on the proposed changes and have them in place for the 2018 municipal election.

“My motivation was to be provocative and stimulate a conversation amongst the current council and the community about what their expectations would be on future councils,” he said.

Hubert is following in the footsteps of former councillor Stephen Orser. who relentlessly championed making the position a full-time job, often to the annoyance of some colleagues. He led an unsuccessful push to have the question put to voters on the 2014 ballot, a motion that was ultimately defeated.

London’s councillors, many who left careers or scaled back to part-time work after being elected, are paid significantly less than their counterparts in other mid-sized Ontario cities.

Councillors in Hamilton, for example, earn $90,385 a year, compared to London politicians, who make the taxable equivalent of $39,000.

Coun. Mo Salih said he wouldn’t talk about compensation, citing a citizens’ task force already looking into the issue, but said he often responds to constituents on social media well past midnight.

“People work around the clock, right. So people want to reach out to you at different times of the day,” said Salih, an active Twitter user with nearly 13,000 followers. “So it’s very demanding in that sense.”

Council is now made up of 15 members — the mayor, elected at large, and 14 councillors representing a single ward.

London used to have a ward system with two councillors each, and a kind of inner cabinet of city council made up of board of control members elected city-wide.

London scrapped its board of control after the 2010 civic election, one of the last major cities on the continent to do away with the oversight body.

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