Trustees on the Kamloops Thompson School Board have voted to give themselves a pay hike.

The raise will bump trustee salaries to $22,250 a year, an increase of just over $2,300.

Trustee John O’Fee says the changes are because the federal government eliminated the tax-free component of school board pay.

“We have always tried to put ourselves in the average of our ten similar districts that are in our size range. That puts us to where we are. The tax changes are such that speaking for myself, and I think most trustees, if anything a wash if not a bit of a loss in terms of what you are actually going to take home after the tax changes with all these changes put in here. Speaking for myself I will net a little bit less.”

O’Fee adds the tax changes assume that serving on school board is your only job something that is not true of anyone currently serving.

“You are not going to be able to support a family on $22,000 a year at least not with a couple of kids like I have. This is something you put a lot of time into and you get a stipend for. It is mostly public service. I am not trying to speak ill of others but as a lawyer there is other things I can do that would pay me a lot more money than being a school trustee. I do not want to discourage people from running for these kinds of offices by making the stipend artificially low.”

The Board Chair salary increased to $25,350 a year, an increase of just over $3,200.

The salary increase will come into play as of January first.