CVRD directors well compensated for their time
The CVRD board should be ashamed of itself for letting some of its members try to sneak through a whopping $11,000 or 33 per cent raise to themselves for April 1 when taxpayers are facing huge financial uncertainty and fear with today’s virus threats. All they did in a recent meeting was defer the pay raise decision for a month and plan to bring it back again for approval. Talk about tone deaf and irresponsible and a cruel April fool’s joke!
Specifically directors Sierra Acton and Ian Morrison, who spearheaded this disgusting nonsense, should resign after explaining fully to the public as to what they were thinking. Acton’s lame claim that 15 months of her work on this raise would be wasted was stupid — what hogfest did she participate in that could spend more than a year trying to figure out how to pick the public’s pocket for such an outrageous raise?
The CVRD directors are already well paid for the time they spend each month on their duties and meetings. Last election there was no shortage of candidates for these plum political positions at the current generous pay rates that cost us in total more than $500,000 each year. The directors also pack home more than $75,000 in annual expense claims.
The public would be more accepting if these guys did something really useful to protect taxpayers from huge increases in annual taxes or prevented the bureaucracy from expanding but they have done none of this. Our taxes increase every year without fail and they add more and more bureaucrats each year way in excess of population growth or inflation.
It would be very helpful if the CVRD and other local governments could also explain to taxpayers how they sat by and approved continuous raises every year for their senior managers so that now more than 130 of them in the Cowichan Valley take home more than $100,000 per year — some taking more than $200,000 per year along with extremely generous life-long gold plated pensions and benefits that taxpayers could only dream about.
You can bet not one of those collecting these huge salaries have lost their job or any pay in the past month unlike many in the private sector who are facing serious, devastating financial challenges. Businesses are suffering and threatened by these unprecedented times and we have local politicians trying to give themselves a huge raise! This irrational imbalance in our society has to be resolved and not by more money for undeserving politicians.
W.E. (Bill) Dumont
Cobble Hill