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A raise in pay
On the surface of it, the raise in pay voted to the Township’s ward councillors this week (see our story on page 3) would seem to be a no-brainer, fairly uncontroversial. As the mayor said in bringing the proposal forth (not having discussed it with any of the beneficiaries beforehand), the councillors are very poorly compensated for the work they do, for the number of hours they have to take away from their personal and professional lives.
We won’t argue with that, although the premise is a bit skewed at budget time. Councillors have just put in a whole lot of extra hours in the last couple of months as they’ve wrestled with some difficult questions as to exactly what and where to cut. Contrast that with July and August, when they rarely meet at all. But on average, if you were to work out how many hours they put in divided into their annual paycheque, they probably barely make minimum wage. Not much for the responsibility they carry.
The handsomely-paid corporate CEOs we’ve been reading about lately already made $27,000 before lunch on their first work day of the year. But that’s a rant for another day.
The raise granted to the ward councillors amounts to $3345 per year. It could be argued that the amount is both too much and too little. Too much because we don’t buy the mayor’s contention that the $17,000 total is “negligible” in terms of the overall budget. We’re sure that over the last two months, there was considerable debate in budget sessions about sums a whole lot less than $17,000. And one of the most controversial items in the budget (to be finalized next week) was the proposal to close the Zephyr library, which costs about $30,000 per year to run. $17,000 would go a long way toward preserving it.
Perhaps an alternative would have been to phase the raise in over two years, softening the impact even more.
On the other hand, one of Mayor O’Connor’s primary motivations for the raise was to make it more attractive for candidates to contest the ward seats. “You can’t hold a full time job and be on Council,” she said. At least not a 9-to-5 job, that’s for sure.
But is raising the salary by $3345 per year really going to make a significant difference in the number of people who toss their hats in the ring? We doubt it. The amount should have been considerably higher to make an impact on a potential candidate’s deliberations. Monetary compensation rarely is a principal factor anyway in choosing to run for elected office, certainly not at the municipal level, and maybe it shouldn’t be.
Nevertheless, we believe the amount proposed by the mayor is an excellent compromise. It’s large enough to help pay some of the gas bills, to soften the blow a little bit when you have to miss your daughter’s soccer game in order to meet with a constituent or cut a ribbon somewhere. But it’s small enough that the taxpayers of the Township know that they’re still getting a heck of a bargain, that they’re paying very little for some very fine leadership.
July 14, 2011
