Griffith City Council elected to maintain their current remuneration rates for another year during Tuesday's council meeting, rejecting a pay cut.

Council's pay rate is based off a report from the state's Local Government Remuneration Tribunal - which recommended for the 2020-21 financial year there would be no further increase to the maximum rate of remuneration for councillors and mayors across the 13 councils categorised as 'Rural/Regional'.

With Griffith City Council already sitting at the maximum remuneration rate of $20,280 per councillor and $44,250 for the mayor, the recommendation effectively meant councillors could not elect to give themselves a pay raise.

Council were addressed by conveyancer and former councillor Bill Lancaster, who urged council to reduce the size of the council or consider taking pay cuts to show solidarity with the rest of the community who have been heavily impacted by the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

"These are hard times - I think you have to offer the people something," Mr Lancaster said.

"You have to show them that you are going to cut expenses, you are going to try and live within your budget, you are taking less money now then you were before and god knows what's going to happen.

"Just go down the main street and see the number of empty shops and if you talk around the traps the number of businesses that are doing hard ... I don't think you can continue to live in a bit of a golden circle - if you cant do that then take a bit of a hit to your pocket yourself, just to show people you are concerned and that we're all in this together."

Mr Lancaster compared Griffith to other councils classified as 'Rural/Regional' and said the average count of councillors of similar councils was nine, with the cost to ratepayers to pay for the city's 12 councillors costing more than the same sized councils of Richmond Valley and Goulburn.

"You would expect that the councils in those 13 towns on a weekly, monthly, annual basis have much of the same sort of decision to make as you do," Mr Lancaster said.

"There's quite a considerable difference to the ratepayer's pockets for Griffith as compared to those two councils and that's the same across the board.

"Are you representing the people better than the average across the board?"

Deputy mayor Doug Curran moved to keep the remuneration rates at the same level as they had been in the previous year and his motion was backed by Councillor Simon Croce, who said you cannot compare Griffith to councils of a similar size.

"It's well and good to compare to other councils but each council has got to be judged on its own," Cr Croce said.

"There's many councils that don't supply their own water, not all councils have sale-yards, not all councils do their own sewerage ... it's really easy to just pick numbers but until you hammer down on what's done by particular councils, that's where if you're talking about meat on the bone - that's where the action is.

"Councillors work pretty cheap compared to employing staff I could tell you now, and I think the residents of Griffith get pretty good value from their councillors."

Cr Croce said while there has been an increase of the Consumer Price Index in the past year, it would be "inappropriate" to take an increase and if there was a raise allowed, it would have been "unlikely" council would have taken the raise.

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Councillor Curran said no increase to remuneration will be "an effective decrease" in the long-term as they will not be adjusting to the change in the CPI.

"I think we've got a fairly tough 12 months - we've got an additional 12 months on top of what we all thought we were going to have," Cr Curran said.

"I don't think anyone around this table does it for the money, it's certainly not worth it for the amount of heartache and the amount of work that we need to do.

"I think it's the right thing by the community given the current circumstances with COVID and such not to take an increase."

Other councils in the region also voted to keep their remuneration as is, with Murrumbidgee Council keeping their pay rate at the maximum of their Rural classification, while Wagga Wagga voted to maintain their current pay rate despite moving up in classification - saving council $52,190 over the course of the next year.