Dear Editor:
Good to see your civil service editorial on top municipal salaries in the July 20 edition, together with the front-page story in your July 18 edition on the same topic (Municipal Brass See Pay Balloon, North Shore News). This issue has been off the public's radar for far too long.
In West Vancouver, from 2006 to 2011, our highest paid District employees (i.e. those who were, effective 2006, taking home in excess of $100,000 from taxpayers, exclusive of a generous benefit package) received, on average, a 35.7% pay increase. That's more than a six per cent increase for each and every year - never mind there has been virtually no population growth in our community for more than a decade, the local inflation rate was less than three per cent pear year during the period in question and, since 2008, district taxpayers, like others across North America and elsewhere, have been living through the most severe economic downturn since the 1930s.
To put things in perspective, if you were being paid in excess of $100,000 as of 2009, you were in the top six per cent of income tax filers in Canada, according to the Canada Revenue Agency. We now have 56 such individuals on the District of West Vancouver payroll. As of 2010, employee salaries and benefits accounted for more than 80 per cent of the district's annual operating budget. This is a situation that is as unacceptable as it is unsustainable.
Elected representatives at the local level need to impose some fiscal discipline on their bureaucracies. If they prove incapable of doing so, which is most likely to be the case, the province must take charge and put an end to this nonsense. There's a provincial general election in less than 10 months. This issue should be front and centre during the campaign. It's up to the electorate to make that happen.
David O. Marley West Vancouver
