By James Portside
March 27th, 2026
BURLINGTON, ON
The province of Ontario released the 2025 Sunshine List, listing all those who earned more than $100,000 in 2025.
In 2025, Burlington’s Human Resources budget was $191,813,064, a 7.15% increase over 2024’s base Human Resources budget of $179,021,000.
Here are some interesting items from the sunshine list for the City of Burlington.
Now you know why they all want to be re-elected
Our former CEO, Hassan Basit, started working for the province on August 4, 2025. For the first 7 months of 2025, Basit earned $248,432.70, which works out to $1,160 a day, every day, including weekends, between January 1 and August 3. Some things are beyond words.
The number of city employees earning over $100,000 a year increased by 9.7% to 554. The 2022 list contained 393 names, the 2023 list 457, and the 2024 list 505.
Of the roughly 1,185 full-time employees, 554 now earn over $100,000 per year.
The 2025 list includes 12 people with the job title “Transit Operator” (down from 15 last year), 2 people with the job title “Mechanic” and no one with the title “Officer, Animal Control”, down from 3 last year.
Of the people we elect to manage our tax dollars, the one person with the job title “Mayor” earned $214,252.45, an increase from 2024’s salary of $202,142.37 (5.99% increase).
The Councillors’ salaries have diverged for this year only, with two councillors receiving retroactive pay in lieu of benefits.
Paul Sharman has fought hard to have his pay “corrected”. The municipal employee pension plan, OMERS, has a rule that people over 71 have to start collecting their pension. OMERS won’t accept any further contributions from employees or employers for people aged 71 or older. The city thought taxpayers could stop paying into Sharman’s pension plan, so last year he earned less total compensation than the other Councillors. Councillor Sharman saw this differently: now the city pays him the money that used to be paid into his pension plan.
A total of 22 people saw their total earnings, salary plus overtime, increase by at least 10%, this list includes our two senior Councillors (Sharman and Bentivegna), who both received retroactive pay in lieu of benefits. Only 8 of these people had changes in their job titles. These people worked for the city in 2023 and are assumed to have worked full years in 2024 and 2025.
The following people earned over $200,000 in 2025.
Who determines the pay grade for City Staff? an all of these be justified?
All is well at City Hall. After pushing through a 5.8% increase in property tax revenue for 2025, with almost no population growth, staff are richly rewarding their own efforts.
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these people have their hand in your pocket all the time. Wouldn’t it be nice to vote yourself a raise? Pigs at the trough. Public servants? Ha ha, who’s servin’ who in this relationship?
Beyond words? How about hard swallowing after reading this. Can the readership explain the value of a city councillor, not to mention a salary increase ?
Suffering and hard times are definitely not in the wheelhouse of
city management. No wonder clinging to a city councillors job is a priority.
Beyond job satisfaction and enjoying the type of work you chose to do. The moral of the article being, if you want a 7.9 out of 10 post retirement life satisfaction from working for a municipality versus a 4.6 score working elsewhere, then get a job with a muni.
You missed Stephen tanner Chief police Halton makin g $455,000.00 massive pay increase thank you tax payers