Final thoughts on the Council Self Pay Raise January 2/2019 Walk and Talk from Your Local Realtor Brad Sinclair

January 09, 2019

Final thoughts on the Council Self Pay Raise January 2/2019 Walk and Talk from Your Local Realtor Brad Sinclair

Who gets a 79% raise in pay? The only people in this world that would get a 79% pay raise is someone who would give themselves that raise. Is this not just wrong?

Peterborough County Council has decided they are worthy of much much more pay. Were these councilors not ok with the current pay when they ran for office? Peterborough County Council has decided we need to pay them more. Not one councilor said hey, this is wrong or maybe we should discuss this. Their raise was given without discussion. What would have happen if a 79% raise for County staff came to vote. Would they vote yes on this motion? Of course not. Does Council value their services more then the hard working staff at the county. Looks like it. This raise is said it is about attraction and retention. Really? I had no idea Peterborough Counties Mayors and Deputy Mayors are hard to retain.

I read a letter to the Peterborough Examiner’s Editor last night by Ron Black. His letter brought even a few more points what made the 79% raise in pay for Peterborough County Council so wrong. Before I get to Ron’s points I want to make one thing clear that seems to be a little misunderstood. The position of Peterborough County Councillor is a part time position working for the County. Two meetings per month and preparation time. This has nothing to do with their pay as Mayors or Deputy Mayors in their own individual townships. One of Ron’s points are these Councillors all ran for their positions for Mayor and Deputy Mayor knowing they will automatically be on Peterborough County Council and the pay for the position. Can anyone remember them running a platform to raise their pay for Ptbo county council? Of coarse not, but this has been one of the very first things they did. Another point that made their rational flawed was they used other municipalities for comparables. None of these municipalities had a deputy mayor but council decided to keep theirs. There was no comparable so they throw him a 37% raise. It was also discussed the Warden was pay was higher then most but since their was a loss in tax relief they were not going to adjust that pay down. So in other words they cherry picked the data and rational of the findings in the research of pay scale.

After writing this show I asked myself, What do I want from this situation? What I want is someone from the council to just speak to us about this situation open and honestly. If they would just communicate with us, maybe this situation could be healed quickly.