In a recent article written by Cecilia Naismith about the Budget discussions at Cobourg Council Councillor Randy Barber suggested that a pay increase for the Council should be considered.

Intrigued by this ‘out of the blue’ suggestion I contacted Mr Barber and asked if he could explain his comment and tell me how he spends his 30 hours a week on Council business.

A few days later I received his answer, and it was a surprise; a very short answer consisting of one word – “No”.

The answer is no surprise to us at the BurdReport seeing as it comes from a Councillor that sits at the bottom of the seniority list and rarely says anything, in public, other than to compliment the Mayor on any occasion. An opinion from this Councillor would be surprising to hear.

Our opinion about Council salaries has done a 180 degree turn. We used to be fully supportive of an increase that would make the job full-time, but that was before the very successful legislative rewrite of the Procedural Bylaw by a Director and Council that refused to take heed of the many suggestions from the Public about how to make the changes. Council meetings used to be once a week and Councillors used to sit on many of the “axed” Advisory Committees to fill in their time.

Now with only two committees that a Councillor sits on and a Regular Council meeting once a month that hardly justifies a full time paycheque! OK this month they had an extra couple of meetings to study the Budget but even that process is not the time-consuming process as it once was as the ‘line by line’ process has been replaced by approving reports from the Staff. The bottom line is that we are now paying Councillors for half the workload it was when the idea of paying them more was adopted.

Now the mantra from the BurdReport is simple – only pay for what we get – part-time workers!

But back to the short but sweet answer to the email to Mr Barber, we will only address this Councillor as Councillor when he is in this Town Hall chair, so it is Mr Barber. We think it shows a couple of things:

• Arrogance in that he should not be questioned
• Indifference to a constituent, we wonder how he answers emails to other people
• A lack of recognition of the public service a Councillor should have
• Greed for more money for a part time job

Now Mr Barber may have had a bad day on the day that he replied to us and if that is the case all he has to do is to jot down all the meetings he has had, the reports he has had to read  to prepare for the meetings he has to attend for the last week and  we will really know if he is actually working 30 hours a week and then we can change our opinion of a Councillor’s workload.

But until then we are not convinced that Councillors should not be paid full-time for a part-time workload.