Stipend not meant to provide living wage
Re: “Victoria councillors seek taxpayers’ support for 50% pay hike”, Nov. 15.
Victoria is easily the most beautiful city in Canada, with a quality of life most Canadians can only dream about.
I arrived by CPR ferry 60 years ago from Alberta and still remember how awesome the Inner Harbour was to an 18-year-old prairie girl.
My two children were born here. I served in the legislature as an MLA and cabinet minister, plus served on two B.C. city councils, in Langley and Kelowna. I have firsthand knowledge of how the system works, or doesn’t.
Public service has gone from primarily a way to give back to your community to a “job” that only requires one to qualify to run for election. Part of the problem is that not enough voters care enough to even vote, and yet municipal governments spend more of our money collectively than any other level. We have only ourselves to blame.
The stipend paid to members of council was meant to cover expenses incurred, not to provide a living wage. It’s a part-time position.
Now here we are in 2020 and Victoria council wants to be paid a full-time salary, to make decisions belonging to senior levels of government.
Worst of all, it wants to turn our beautiful city into a replica of something they saw in another country.
Look after our roads and parks, find innovative ways to house our residents of all ages and incomes, give the police department the bodies they need to keep our citizens safe and find a way to make amalgamation happen. Amalgamation would give you a legitimate reason to be demanding more money.
I appreciate that you have all put your names forward to do what sometimes feels like a thankless job, but public service is truly that, the opportunity to serve the community you love.
Carol Gran
Victoria
Too many mayors, too many councillors
The whole method of administration across Greater Victoria needs to be updated. There are too many mayors and councillors feeding from the public trough.
We have to cover the cost of a second level of local government called the Capital Regional District, where the mayor and a select number of councillors from each area can collect a second income, all at taxpayers’ expense.
On top of that, I understand that some of the senior management of the CRD receive a salary between $170,000 and $250,000.
Get rid of the CRD, and merge several of the local municipalities into one Greater City of Victoria, with one mayor plus a few councillors to represent each area.
Take a look at the numbers: Toronto has one mayor, 25 councillors, and a population of 2.93 million people. Calgary has one mayor, 14 councillors, and a population of 1.34 million people.
Oak Bay has one mayor, six councillors, and a population of 18,094 people.
Victoria has one mayor, eight councillors, and a population of 85,792 people.
Esquimalt has one mayor, six councillors, and a population of 17,655 people.
View Royal has one mayor, four councillors, and a population of 10,408 people.
Colwood has one mayor, six councillors, and a population of 16,859 people.
Langford has one mayor, six councillors, and a population of 35,342 people.
(These numbers are the best information available from different sources, but serve the purpose of comparison).
We have put up with this total mismanagement too long. The money that is wasted on mayors and councillors, plus the CRD, would be better used for more police officers and better services across the region.
Henry Fox
Victoria
Does council have an ulterior motive?
What universe does council inhabit?
Councillors seeking support for a $25,700 or 55 per cent raise for a part-time position is so outrageous, many think there’s really an alternate agenda.
To date, Councillors Geoff Young, Marianne Alto and Charlayne Thornton-Joe have expressed reservations about such a bone-headed idea.
So, is this goofy proposal a distraction from other budget discussions? The city is asking for a healthy 3.97 per cent budget increase, VicPD wants 4.43, and the CRD an almost eight per cent tax haul. It’s not widely known that the amended provisional CRD requisition for the City of Victoria is now 9.2 per cent.
Are councillors trying to dissuade working people and business leaders from running for public office? All this moaning and malarkey of needing to work 60 hours a week for a part-time job is bound to give pause to potential fiscally conservative candidates in the upcoming byelection and 2022 municipal election.
Is it fair to even debate a pay hike when there’s a lack of transparency around overall remuneration? Unlike the CRD and Vancouver — which post details for taxpayers prominently on their websites — we can’t easily find what’s paid out in wages, benefits, pension, travel expenses and so on.
Is it a bargaining tactic? Let’s ask for the moon and maybe settle for 10 per cent, which is four times inflation. It’s also about four times what working stiffs are getting in raises these days.
Stan Bartlett, chair
Grumpy Taxpayer$ of Greater Victoria
Who is defending quality public education?
I suppose it may be a consolation for some that a bitter three-week strike that divided a community has now been resolved due to shrewd negotiations that saw CUPE accept a very similar deal to the one they rejected 10 days ago.
Parents and students are now expected to return to their schools and be grateful for this opportunity, having previously been barred entry by the same system that they fund.
Over the past 13 years, my kids have experienced four separate disruptions to their schooling through no fault of their own. The finger-pointing and hand-wringing of our education leaders and politicians is truly shameful, as the educational needs and welfare of our students continue to take a back seat to this non-ending squabbling.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise, then, that the province with the highest enrolment in private and independent schools is B.C.
A consequence of this dispute is having my youngest transfer out of district. Continuing her schooling and graduating on time is a priority for her, and she had to make the very difficult, yet mature, decision to say goodbye to childhood friends and carry on elsewhere.
I wonder how many other students in School District 63 have done the same?
To all the grown-ups in charge: You all claim to believe in quality public education and you’ve done nothing to defend it. We don’t believe you anymore.
Tara Houle
North Saanich
Leave the leaves: They’re good for the soil
Fall in Victoria is marked by huge piles of leaves at the ends of driveways and along our roads. Do we ever wonder how the trees fare when their leaves are systematically removed every year from nourishing the roots beneath them?
Leaf litter provides the energy for billions of insects, worms and nematodes to “fluff up” the soil to increase its volume by 50 per cent or more, thus helping water, minerals and roots to penetrate the soil. Chemical reactions improve the nutrient supply to roots and their all-important allies below ground — mycorrhizae and fungi. Much more is going on beneath our feet than we think.
We Victorians say we care about nature, yet each autumn, we dispatch heavy trucks to patrol our streets to remove leaves for distant municipal composting. Worse still, some of us use noisy, gas-powered leaf blowers instead of raking the leaves into piles — leaves that come from our gardens as well as the municipal boulevards in front of our homes. What are we thinking of?
Except for certain areas, such as public sidewalks, where rotting leaves make for hazardous conditions, it is better to leave leaves to decay in situ.
Keep your driveway, deck and even your lawn clear if you must. But let’s spread the rest of our leaves close to their parent trees for maximum ecological benefit and minimum human cost. Let us stop this Victorian environmentally and economically damaging practice.
Our trees and our grandchildren will thank us for it.
Anne Whyte
Saanich
Gas-price probe sends mixed message
Re: “Echos of Dr. Evil as premier tries to demonize oil companies,” Les Leyne column, Nov. 14.
Premier John Horgan is looking for a culprit for our high gasoline prices.
All very well, but there is muddled thinking here, and a sadly mixed message.
It is much easier to reduce our reliance on petroleum fuels when the population can see a real incentive to do so. Unfortunately, “the good of the planet” is both too nebulous and too long range to engage more than a few people. What WILL drive us to more cycling, more use of public transit, more walking and less motoring is high fuel prices that we cannot escape.
The other side lies in the reality of the fuel markets in the continent, where Canada, as a relatively small player, is selling crude into a glutted market, then buying back refined fuels at scarcity prices.
The only answer to this — if this is what we really want — is to build our own refineries, or expand them, an answer we’ve made more expensive than it should be by our NIMBY attitudes.
We cannot have it both ways.
John A. Laidlaw
Victoria
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