I will say it again, “Can we have Justin Smith back?” (Justin was the former chair of the CRC)
The latest version of the CRC has been anything but cognitive. While they have incredible citizen proposals in front of them (eliminating the mayor as chair of council meetings and not allowing him to break ties-tie votes would fail, hiring a city manager, increasing the size of the council, eliminating term limits) one member of the CRC, a former private religious college administrator wants to let the council and mayor give themselves raises;
While I do agree councilors should be able to apply for benefits (Councilor Stehly asked for this and was denied) the rest of the proposal is ludicrous.
First, the obvious. The voters clearly rejected pay raises for the mayor and city council in the last city election, telling me they wanted to put the issue to bed.
But Mr. Zylstra just can’t let a sleeping giant rest.
The system works well. The mayor and city council get raises based on inflation/deflation, which;
• Eliminates any conflicts of interest
• Is in line with what the regular private citizen minion gets for raises
• Keeps the mayor and city council out of making controversial/unethical decisions
• Raises should be based on merit
It is pretty obvious to me that someone in either the administration or city council, or both, have roped Zylstra to bring this back door effort to give elected officials raises.
The council is a group of lazy asses that wouldn’t know work if it fell off of the top floor of the bunker ramp and knocked them in the noggin.
I will clarify, there are several councilors past and present who bust their asses and put in well over 40 hours a week. But they are an endangered species. I just look at councilor Selberg who has done virtually nothing but show up to meetings the past 8 years. A tree stump would have served us better (and probably would have talked more).
I am not opposed to looking at the council’s pay structure, but I think it should be based on how much work they put in.
In other words, every councilor should get a base pay, like they do now, but any hours they log going to citizen or other public meetings out of their scope of duties should be compensated for. They should also get merit pay based on how many emails and phone calls they respond to.
Just saying you ‘Work Hard’ doesn’t cut it for me.
The irony is if this does make it to the ballot, which I am sure this group of zombies will endorse, the voters will kill it. In fact, I encourage the city council to kill the proposal before it even makes the ballot.
Here’s the deal, even after councilors are elected they only have one boss, the taxpayer, and it is that very taxpayer that should decide what your pay is. They did that in the new charter and it has worked well since. I may claim to be progressive, but if something ain’t broken, don’t fix it!