See how city councillors spend their time ahead of a pay hike vote

An arms-length task force is recommending city councillors receivea raise of at least $10,000 to bring their pay chequesup to the median full time employment income of the average Londoner.

To help understand how many hours per week the city's elected officials spend on municipal business, we asked them to fill out a survey.

More than half of London's councillorsresponded before our deadline, and their answers offer a glimpse into how they divide their time, including face-to-face interactions with Londoners.

• Email was by far the most time-consuming way of communicating with city staff, councillors and constituents for all councillorswho answered except Coun. Paul Hubert, who did most of his communicating via telephone.

• Coun. Harold Usher says he spends 24 hours a week, on average, in meetings, and 20 hours on reading reports. He also spends the most time communicating with constituents face-to-face

Hours spenton average, per week, on communication

City councillors in London make about $36,000 a year and haven't received a pay raise since 2013.

• Task force recommends boosting councillor pay

Somecouncillorscontinue to work other jobs, while others focus all of their time on city council business.

Time spent on average, per week, on meetings, city events and reading reports

What we asked councillors:

We reached out Friday at 11 a.m. to all fourteen councillors, and the mayor. (For the full text of our email to the councillors, see below).

We asked them to respond by Sunday at 6 p.m.

Hello,
We are trying to get a sense of what a typical week looks like forcouncillorsand the mayor, (we understand that some weeks have much more work than others).
Could you please let us know how many hours aweek, on average, you spend doing the following:

Reading council and committee reports

Attending council and committee meetings
Conducting city/constituent business via phone
Conducting city/constituent business via social media

Conducting city/constituent business via email

Meeting with constituents face to face
Attending city events
PLEASE RESPOND BY 6 PM ON SUNDAY.

Here's what happened:

• We got out-of-office reply emails from councillors Tanya Park and Stephen Turner.
• Phil Squire replied that the task of quantifying his time was not a simple one.
• An hour later, at noon, Coun. Harold Usher was the first to reply with his numbers.
• Coun. Paul Hubert answered Friday evening. CouncillorsHopkins and Ridleyfollowed over the weekend.
• On Monday at midnight, Coun. Mo Salihsaid he'd just noticed the email and didn't have the data off hand.
• The mayor's communications director emailed at 7:45 a.m. on Monday and asked that we send all media requests to her or her counterpart, not directly to the mayor, in the future.
• At 8:20 a.m. Monday, we extended the deadline to 11 a.m.
• CouncillorsJared Zaifman, Maureen Cassidy, Josh Morgan and Stephen Turner replied, as did the mayor's communication's assistant. We didn't include the mayor's responses because they were time ranges, but we've pasted his responses below.
• CouncillorsJesse Helmerand Tayna Park replied too late for us to include their data in our charts.

What the mayor said:

Reading council and committee reports: 10-15 hr/wk

Attending council and committee meetings: varies by week and often I steam committee meetings offsite, but average 10-15 hr/wk

Conducting city/constituent business via phone: 5-10hr/wk

Conducting city/constituent business via social media: 5-10 hr/wk, we have a dedicated team that monitors all social media channels for issues.

Conducting city/constituent business via email: 5-10hr/wk

Meeting with constituents face to face: 10-15hr/wk

Attending city events: 10-15hr/wk