Editor: Re: Richter calls for performance based-salaries (The Times, Feb. 2).
I will not rehash the financial windfall that the mayor and council reaped on Dec. 1, 2011. Suffice it to say that I find Councillor Steve Ferguson’s comments truly disgusting and unthinking. He opines that council raises are always “a very, very difficult” issue.
That may well be so, but it does not have to be unless we subscribe to his thought process which, thankfully, I don’t. Simply tie it to the annual inflation rate.
I am thankful that I paid a lot of money into my pension plan while I was working and it now pays me a decent return. My plan recently increased my monthly payments by three per cent, not the 12.6 and 19 per cent that generally, this council and mayor apparently had no qualms in pocketing.
The article further states the backgrounds of some councillors and the mayor — those being retired police officers, school principal, and school counsellor, in Ferguson’s case.
All of these jobs pay handsome retirement dividends but nowhere near what we, the citizens of Langley Township, have endowed on these folks.
The comment that is most galling is Ferguson’s statement that, “Now is not the time to cut back remuneration.” Can he share with us lowly serfs just when a good time might be?
Am I to assume that when civic staff are negotiating their contracts they can enter into discussions with the knowledge that now is not the time for financial stability? That a pay raise of between 12.6 and 19 per cent is perfectly acceptable?
I don’t believe anybody would deny a politician a raise, within limits. However, I am afraid that limit has been not only met but exceeded. I missed the memo saying municipal politicians are not here to serve the electorate but to squeeze every penny out of us that they can.
Will Rogers once said, “Everything is changing. People are taking the comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.” Truer words have seldom been spoken.
Rob Jones-Cook,
Langley
