Editor: Re: End council retirement payouts: Progressives, Record, July 19.
First of all, the job of councillor and mayor is a real job requiring considerable time commitment and devotion to attendance at meetings, reading thousands of pages of detailed proposals and generally keeping oneself available to residents to get the pulse of the city.
Our councillors and mayor are underpaid. I don’t know how many hours Mayor Cote puts in, but he has been at every civic or group function that I have attended during his tenure, and quite likely if you divide his salary by the hours he worked, it would be lower than our city’s fair wage. If we want qualified individuals to be our representatives and to devote themselves to doing a good job, we should pay them accordingly.
However, I am not in favour of the retirement payouts for our elected officials. They should be paid well while they are in office, and they can contribute to their own RRSPs just like every self-employed businessperson does.
Dale Darychuk, New Westminster
