Al Hogarth is the only member of Maple Ridge council who wants to determine his own pay.
And guess what? He wants another raise.
And who pays for that raise? The same people as always – the taxpayers.
Mr. Hogarth needs more of your money because he’s not making as much as he can as a realtor since he spends so much time on council. He claims he loses $90,000 a year in business because he’s on council. He also claims the work a councillor does has doubled in the past 10 to 15 years.
You know what has more than doubled since 2008?
Council pay.
Hogarth wants an annual cost of living increase, and for council’s base wage to be reset in line with that in neighbouring municipalities every three years.
We can see where this is going – and it’s never going to end.
Council pay, and who decides it, was a contentious and distracting debate during last fall’s municipal election. Now this, a staff report recommending a pay raise schedule for council, at a time when the province’s teachers just walked off the job because there is no money to give them a raise, whether they deserve it or not.
Council just cancelled a scheduled increase in December, until it figured out a way to determine what politicians should get paid.
As we’ve said before, just look down the road, where Pitt Meadows has an independent committee with citizen representation decide whether council should get a raise or not.
Mr. Hogarth claims Maple Ridge has tried using a public group to do that and it didn’t work. Does that mean he didn’t get a raise?
What doesn’t work is having council constantly voting on its own pay. It’s unsustainable.
And if Mr. Hogarth doesn’t like that, there are, as we saw with 28 candidates for council in the last election, plenty of people willing to do the part-time job for what it pays now – $37,300 a year.
– The Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows News
