Wow, does this council like to spend! I'm speaking specifically about council's decision to approve a wage increases for themselves. Currently, Mayor Ivan Brooker receives $84,166.08 and Councillors receive $28,330.56; a 20 per cent increase for Mr.
Wow, does this council like to spend! I'm speaking specifically about council's decision to approve a wage increases for themselves. Currently, Mayor Ivan Brooker receives $84,166.08 and Councillors receive $28,330.56; a 20 per cent increase for Mr. Brooker from 2015. Both Brooker and Councillors also received benefits including a travel allowance, mileage, cell phones, training allowances, lodging, meals, medical/dental/life insurance with no premiums and one-third of their salary is tax free. While the current 2.5 per cent increase does not sound like a lot, this represents the second raise that council has voted for themselves in less than three years. This occurred while council has sacked our municipal reserves and is sending our anticipated overall debt level to above 90 per cent: and that's assuming the pool doesn't have any more cost over runs, a solution for the current fund raising shortfalls can be found and a solution for the shortfall in property tax revenue is found Councillor Jeff Toews is quoted as saying that it is “ludicrous ” not to bring salaries in line with other municipalities. He's even compared the salary expectations of Councillors to large corporations. Since we already pay some senior staff the equivalent salaries for the same job that is done in Calgary; a town with a population of less than 30,000 versus a city with a population of more than 1 million. I guess his rationale would make complete sense, if it wasn't for its complete lack of common sense. As a father of twin six-year-old girls who already seem like they are acting like teenagers - I understand an argument that compensation should be made to compensate for the time away from our families. I also share a more muted concern over Coun. Morgan Nagel's comments that, while popular, are likely over simplistic. If Nagel was this concerned, he could refuse this pay raise or direct the additional funds into the numerous underfunded agencies in Cochrane. Now that would show some serious commitment! My concern is that none of the councillors, save Nagel at times, appear to have done anything more than show up for their council meetings and vote; sometimes for issues that directly affect their own self-interests.
That begs the question; “Are we getting our money's worth from council that can theoretically show up for a meeting once a month for a collective cost to Cochrane taxpayers of approximately $169.983.36 per year not counting benefits? ” This represents a potential hourly wage rate of $416.66 per hour (six hours per month x 12 meetings per year (72 hours total) plus benefits of approximately $30,000. Even if I was to be generous and say there were two meetings per month, add preparation time for those meetings and add some other unspecified time, I still get a potential hourly wage rate of $147.55 per hour. Eight hours of direct meetings at four hours per meeting, four hours of preparation for meetings at two hours per meeting and four hours per month of unspecified time x 24 meetings per year (192 hrs total). To get to the current salary excluding benefits of $28,330.56. When you start to break the numbers down like this, I think most people would agree that councillors are already very well compensated for the time they ‘donate' to fulfil a civic duty. Dan Cunin
