Corporation of Hamilton Councillor Troy Symonds is said to be considering resigning after City chiefs voted to pay themselves thousands of dollars for attending committee meetings.Mr Symonds, along with Alderman Gwyneth Rawlins and Councillor Larry Scott, opposed the motion during a meeting on Tuesday night.But five other members of the nine-man Team Hamilton group, including Mayor Graeme Outerbridge and Deputy Mayor Donal Smith, approved of stipend, which could net each Councillor around $17,000-a-year and cost ratepayers more than $150,000 annually.Mr Symonds could not be contacted last night, but City insiders said that he had announced verbally his intention to quit, although he has yet to make his decision formal by putting it in writing to the Mayor.Another representative said they had been dismayed by Tuesday night’s vote and suggested that the municipality was now being run by a “fearless five”, who shut out the other four elected officials from any decision-making.Despite claims of a “fractured” team, Mr Outerbridge defended the decision, saying it was “an indication of the Council’s feeling and thoughts about remuneration for the time spent working on behalf of the city”.And he said the Corporation planned to discuss the proposal with Home Affairs Minister Michael Fahy before any payments — which are to be backdated to May 2012 — are made.“I will state clearly, that as of today, no money has been paid to any members of this Council,” Mr Outerbridge said.“We look forward to communicating with the Minister on this matter and resolving it quickly. It was the intention of the City of Hamilton Council to discuss with the Minister the Council’s view of the disparity of the effort and responsibility of an appointed Government board versus the responsibilities of the elected members of the City of Hamilton. The recently passed amendment placed them on par.”Mr Outerbridge also took aim at Corporation sources who had leaked information to the media.“This information would have been released to the public after the Minister and the Council had had an opportunity to discuss the resolution. However, the information was released to the media before the discussions could begin.“In regard to the question of confidentiality, it is normal practice for the Council that discussions in restricted sessions be kept in confidence until the appropriate time for release to the public.“A number of confidential documents and discussions have been released prematurely to the media which has contributed to the reminder to all concerned of the importance of confidentiality until the appropriate time to share the information with the public.”Last night former mayor Charles Gosling expressed some sympathy with the current administration’s wish for remuneration, but said the timing of the vote — less than 24 hours before the Municipalities Amendment Act was passed in the Senate on Wednesday afternoon — had been badly judged.“I have said before publicly that I do think that the role of the Mayor and Councillors deserves some remuneration of some kind,” Mr Gosling, usually a fierce critic of Team Hamilton, said.“I disagreed with them when they were contemplating a salary for themselves, but I don’t really have any disagreement with paying them on a meeting-by-meeting basis. But the timing of this is dreadful and I just don’t think they did it properly.”And he suggested the vote could have been made as a direct snub to Government for bringing in changes to the way the municipalities operate. Mr Outerbridge has pledged to fight the Act, which he described as “a very dictatorial piece of legislation”.“I spent three years of my life trying to separate national government from local government,” Mr Gosling said.“There’s a lot of what the current Corporation has put forward in its objections which should have had proper consideration, but unfortunately, due to other actions, they’re not taken seriously. The vote for stipends is just another item in that particular column.”