Look West With Wonder – The High Cost Of Local Government
While the citizens of Prince George have been complaining about expenses and the remuneration paid to city councillors and regional district directors, they might want to take note of what takes place to the west, in Vanderhoof and the Regional District of Bulkley Nechako. We are not alone.
Gerry Thiessen is the Mayor of Vanderhoof. He also sits on the Regional District of Bulkley Nechako's Board as Vice Chair. The posts are considered part-time positions and, outside of municipal politics, Thiessen is a local real esate agent in the community.
According to statistics from 2011, the population of Vanderhoof is 4480 people. Prince George is roughly 15-times the size of Vanderhoof, but you wouldn't know it from the cost of local government.
In 2013, Thiessen earned $33,695.28 in his role as mayor. His expenses in that capacity totalled $21,094.06. Keep in mind that one-third of that salary is tax free.
While the most recent financial information available from the Regional District of Bulkley Nechako is for 2012, Thiessen earned $19,832.00 as a director, with a further $2,957.40 in expenses. Again, one-third of the remuneration is tax free.
While there might be a slight difference once the 2013 financial figures are released, using the available information, Thiessen earned approximately $77,500 , The final figure for 2013 we do not yet know.
The Bulkley- Nechako regional district has a poulation of 39,208 and includes Smithers, Houston, Telkwa, Burns Lake, Ft St James and Vanderhoof.
It is worth looking at the remuneration and expense allowance bylaw for the Bulkley Nechako Regional District's Board of Directors. Below are sections of Bylaw no.1689, covering the remuneration of Directors and Alternate Directions The bylaw was passed by the board back on January 23rd, 2014:
With the cost of running local governments becoming a growing concern, you need look no further than Vanderhoof and the Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako to see why.
I'm Meisner and that's one man's opinion.
Comments
Okay, so that begs the obvious follow up question of what do you think they should be paid?
Personally, I think 34K a year as mayor is certainly reasonable, even for a city the size of Vanderhoof. What should we pay these people, minimum wage? 10% more? 20% more? Maybe we should bring in TFW’s to serve as our politicians? They would be really cheap. Heck, we may even get better candidates, LOL.
If you really want to get costs under control, I’m afraid you have to look way higher than the salary of mayors, councillors. You have to revisit the services being offered by the city. Ultimately, cities are there to fix things, operate things, provide services and administer things. If you want to reduce costs, you have to start by eliminating those things. that will impact downstream costs of employees, facilities, repairs, etc.
So, which do you want to chop? Be specific.
p.s. I don’t think politicians should be paid extra to attend meetings. To me, that is part of their job . . .
Almost $54,000 as mayor and director with about $24,000 in expenses seems a bit steep to me but, he may be worth it, I don’t live in Vanderhoof so I really don’t have an opinion on that. Was does irk me though, is the tax free part.
$21,000 in expenses for a part time mayor seems excessive.
Are the records of what these expenses were for available to the taxpayers?
Looks like this is a well paying position. Hope Vanderhoof residents have a choice for mayor at the polls this year.
Hopefully we get some answers with regards to the excessive expenses – consider that Mayor Green spent $14,000 as a full time mayor representing a large city.
Vanderhoof residents need some accountability in their local government office!!!
Not a Facebooker but hope this gets shared through the community so people make informed decisions this November.
Let’s chop the bloated salaries of federal employees.
How about accountants that work for the federal government?
I bet they have lots of spare time to blog rather than work.
It the regular comments on this site were representative of public opinion I can not imagine why anyone, in their right mind, would run for public office.
Sounds almost identical Furbink to the comments about teachers
Posted by: Furbink on June 25 2014 8:12 AM
It the regular comments on this site were representative of public opinion I can not imagine why anyone, in their right mind, would run for public office.
————
Once they’re in office the don’t pay us any attention anyhow.
I totally agree winterissoming! I heard someone on the radio complaining that teachers wanted improved benefits while they themselves had none. I wonder if the caller had SIX YEARS OF POST SECONDARY EDUCATION like we require of anyone to teach school in BC from Grade one on up. So very sick of whiners and complainers who would just seem to need to give everyone else a dressing down.
PS: I have no reason to think there is a lack of those in public office paying attention. Who should they be listening to? Axman?
Lots of people with post secondary education flipping burgers… just saying
I have three myself, sad to see my kids not understanding some courses and the entire class afraid to ask the teacher for more clarification because they were labelled as stupid in front of the rest of their peers. And this is not just one student, or my child, but just about the entire class. During the teacher interviews it got so heated once all the families learned of this the principal had to call off the meetings and play mediator.
One daughter went through the system struggling for Cs the other home school since grade 9 and had honours and principals list every year. Go figure, and only my wife and me, and a online teacher from Vanderhoof to boot. Most days her work was completed in three hours, now working on her ESL teaching cert
To get what you pay for you must pay attention to what (who) you vote for.
Posted by: Furbink on June 25 2014 12:45 PM
I totally agree winterissoming! I heard someone on the radio complaining that teachers wanted improved benefits while they themselves had none. I wonder if the caller had SIX YEARS OF POST SECONDARY EDUCATION like we require of anyone to teach school in BC from Grade one on up. So very sick of whiners and complainers who would just seem to need to give everyone else a dressing down.
————
SIX YEARS OF POST SECONDARY EDUCATION! You make it sound like that’s some great feat in this day and age. A BA is generally about as useful nowadays as a high school diploma was 30 years ago.
Comments for this article are closed.