A Modest Proposal Regarding Number of Council Members

This came up on the Phorum a couple of months ago- Why do we have a Council of 7, instead of 5 as most similarly sized incorporated communities do? I recalled it having to do with the Islands Trust Act.

So I contacted Gary Paget at the ministry responsible in Victoria. He concurred with my recollection, but said that, at any time, a community can hold a referendum to reduce the number of Councillors, with the change taking effect at the following election. I posted that on the Phorum, and very quickly the topic died, though a couple of comments about it being a 'distraction issue' came up.

Still, I keep thinking about it. Each Councillor gets paid about $10,700 annually, plus receives extended medical/dental, valued at up to $1800/yr. By the time you add 'care and feeding'- travel/conventions/additional staff and meeting time and office supplies, my guess is it costs the municipality about $18000 a year per 'extra Councillor'.

Having seven on Council has its merits- a richer, more diverse discussion, wider array of talents opinions and aptitudes. More horsepower for committee liaisons. But an informal counting of heads on the current Council (one not there at the time), yielded 5 for, 1 against looking at reducing the number to four Councillors.

With $36,000 in hand, we could use that money for more services, reduce taxes (good bet on that one!), OR, raise the pay for each elected official. That could be an extra $7000 or so, not bad in percentage terms as a pay hike...

So why pay the hacks more? Best reason I can think of is to make the pay more commensurate with the workload and responsibility, plus to attract more/better candidates.

As it is, most Council members (with notable exceptions) are either retired/semi-retired, have a bit of money in their jeans, and/or are extremely community minded, stupid, or all of the above! Still, we attract some really good candidates- in fact I'm amazed at how fortunate we are to get the people we do.

But upping the pay, and demanding more from our politicians, makes sense to me.