The Village of Keremeos paid out a hefty severance package to its former chief financial officer in 2024.
The Statement of Financial information (SoFi), a government-mandated and publicly-available report, was accepted by village council on Monday, June 23.
The report is required to be prepared and published by July each year.
The village has minimal full-time staff and in recent years the SoFI has contained two names that fall into the so-called "Sunshine List" category of employees paid more than $75,000.
If that value was adjusted for inflation from when the SoFI was last updated in 2002, according to a presentation to Penticton city council on their own SoFI, just using two per cent inflation per year would make the cutoff $116,000.
That applies to the village's previous chief administrative officer Marg Coulson, and the village's previous chief financial officer Nicolette Keith. In 2024, their pay was $114,471 and $311,369, respectively. The statement for 2024 also had public works manager Don Bishop on it, who was paid $92,557.
Both Coulson and Keith ceased working for the village in 2024, with Coulson leaving for Osoyoos to become the town's corporate officer.
Keith, on the other hand, was cut loose by the village, who provided her with a 10.67-month severance pay.
In addition, current CFO Zahara Kanji-Aquino noted that Keith received $90,000 in vacation time and other associated accruals that hadn't been properly accounted for in 2023.
Employees making less than $75,000 accounted for $475,504 of the salaries paid by the village for 2024.
