Taxpayers are on the hook for some big severance payouts for members of Winnipeg’s city council who chose not to run again or are defeated in the upcoming election.

According to city rules, severance pay accrues at the rate of three weeks for each year served, to a maximum of six months. To figure out how much each council member is potentially inline for, I looked at the city’s 2013 compensation disclosure report, and estimated the payouts in the table below. The numbers I calculated won't be exact to the penny, but they'll give you an idea as to how much we're looking at.

In the table below, “declared not running” figures are council members who are guaranteed a payout at this point…for the rest of the eligible recipients, we’ll have to wait until election day to see if they "win" the payout or a seat on council. To see how much others could receive if they lose, see the "2014 estimate" column.

Note: For Councillor Fielding I used Jenny Gerbasi’s income figure as Fielding served on EPC in 2013, but did not in 2014. For Councillor Swandel, the opposite occurred: he wasn’t on EPC for most of 2013, but was appointed towards the end of the year. For his situation I used Councillor Wyatt’s earnings as a base.