Listen
Getting what you pay for
On Jan. 18, The Toronto Star and National Post published articles about the proposed salary increases for Whitchurch-Stouffville’s mayor and council, reigniting a firestorm of debate which culminated in the scaled down proposal approved at the Jan. 24 budget meeting.
Inevitably, most of the initial reaction focused on the percentage of the proposed increases – a headline-grabbing 43 per cent over two years – rather than concentrating on the amount of compensation itself. Until now, councillors’ base salary has been just $27,729 for what is considered a part-time job, but which now demands far more time and energy than it did a few short years ago.
With a rapidly growing and increasingly diverse population, we need a council that can concentrate their efforts and time on properly representing all of us, from those born in Canada to recent immigrants, and from young people to senior citizens. If we want to attract the best and brightest, we must compensate them fairly, and in turn demand full commitment from them to our needs and concerns.
No one could accuse the mayor of doing a part-time job – in fact, the office routinely requires long days, followed by attendance at a plethora of community events, from breakfast meetings to New Year’s Eve celebrations. And both the mayor and members of council must be willing to make themselves available whenever their constituents want to contact them, which is often during evening hours or on weekends.
As Ben Embiricos pointed out in his December Talk of the Town column, four of our current council members are retirees who also have pensions. If we want to encourage younger people to step up and get involved, we can’t expect them to do it for love and most of them can’t to afford to do it for what we currently pay them.
Surely nobody would take on this job unless he or she was motivated by a genuine desire to serve the community. After all, none of us is going to get rich on the compensation package, even had the 43 per cent increase had been applied.
For full details on budget approvals for 2012, visit www.stouffville.com.
