When Councillor Richter put a motion forward to roll back the Council's and the Mayor's ~50% salary increase in this past term, no one seconded her motion including Mayor Green whose own salary increased from the previous Mayor's salary of $64,922 to $93,722. The Mayor's silence on Richter's motion was deafening especially from someone who talks about 0-0-0 tax increases, but doesn't hesitate to
quietly accept and avoid any public discussion that he got a ~50% salary increase!
Finally add the unneccesary legal fees caused by this Mayor who it is now well proven did "mislead" his council as well as all the lawyers including his own earlier sought out legal opinion on the now infamous Mayor's "Greengate & Cover-Up" affair.
What is the central theme in this election? It is honesty, integrity and prudent use of taxpayers dollars. In this Editor's opinion Mayor Rick Green fails on all three counts. How can this mayor and his "yes men slate-mates" ever be trusted with our tax dollars?
by LFP EDITOR
Mayor Remuneration Expenses 1997-2010 (2)
Welcome back LFP readers. After well over a year's hiatus LFP celebrated it's first month back. I am told that there were just under 4000 viewers in the past initial 30 days! We really welcome you back and thank you for your interest. LFP EDITOR
ReplyDeleteMr. Chadwick, thank you for your comments. Sorry but our blogger commenting platform does not permit this LFP Editor to edit out partial comments from your posting. So either I post it all or nothing. I have some concerns with specific words you used that could still be considered litigation kindling. Hence sorry can't post it.
ReplyDeleteBut I appreciate your thoughts.
FYI this posting's attached spreadsheet on Mayor's salary & expenses is confirmed as accurate. Otherwise I would not have published it.
But yes I agree with you Daniel that we should see more details on expenses and also the Councillor’s expenses too. Feel free to ask Langley Township Admin for these because it should be available and send us your results and we will give you a guest columnist posting perhaps too. The council's expenses I believe have several times been reported in the local papers before but I don't have them handy right now.
The point in my story's observation is that the Mayor is in my opinion speaking out of both sides of his mouth when on one hand he talks a big story about being the taxpayer's great white hope and on the other hand he quietly takes a massive salary increase without a question, whimper or a thought of even seconding Richter’s motion of reconsideration simply for an open, honest & transparent discussion. Why did he not want to even discuss the obscene salary hikes? His expenses just add insult to injury in my opinion. Keep in mind the Mayor sits on Many Metro Vancouver committees at $300+ a meeting too with many meetings a month that are not included in these numbers. His long time friend Mayor Jackson the present Metro Van Chair despite the suggestions of the majority of council appointed him to most of these. But that's another topic. Great job if you can get it don't you think? How many are running for Mayor do you say?
On the same note I highly recommend you check out some of the previous postings in LFP such as the one by our publisher, Kim Richter who in 2007 wrote a piece herein about the value of attending annual conferences and the benefits that come back to Langley Township. See the link here: http://langleyfreepress.blogspot.com/2007/06/richter-report-june-17-2007-should.html She wrote this apparently because some were critical of attending any conferences at that time.
On a final note Mr. Chadwick when you talk about your concerns regarding balanced reporting, I have the same concerns too. Hence the needs for outlets like LFP. We are essentially primarily editorialists with our own views. Slanted? Biased? Yes, but it is our view and a valuable perspective indeed. I feel it is certainly heads and shoulders above others especially after reading the bile and vicious comments written in by mostly anonymous partisan plants below most of the Times News reports. We restarted LFP because of this centrally concerted effort to mislead the community about events and especially about people who they clearly targeted and are working hard for the community’s interest.
ReplyDeleteOn the topic of balanced reporting, my sympathies go out to all this countries local newspapers because if you have been watching they are being slowly reduced to finding easy to get stories and regurgitate simple accessible police and crime stories. They are being squeezed for every available dollar so that they are either an attractive asset to be traded, outright sold or become primarily bigger profit generators. There was a time when local papers had professional photographers. Not so any more. Editors and Publishers are spread over more newspapers and reporters are no longer permitted overtime to cover stories after regular working hours! Can you imagine that? Costly Veteran reporters are retired earlier to permit fewer and cheaper throw away cub reporters and dirt cheap interns. I am not talking about any specific paper but this trend is clearly evident to me in Canada and elsewhere. Hence the already hard working reporters and editors, especially at the local level, are spread so thinly that investigative reporting and yes even balanced reporting is being damaged and become casualties to dishonest politicians and others who especially prey on this weakness for their own personal gain.
Hence LFP and its ilk serve an important venue of opinion to be thrown and mixed together by you with other contradicting opinions to help readers like you come to a fair balanced and independent opinion of your own about what the real truth is for you. You ultimately formulate the final opinion you believe is true based on all competing sources. Do we try to get your attention? You betcha!
Daniel, As you Requested See the following salary & expenses list and sources (Sorry we don't have the itemized list. See if you can get it. Let us know. This Editor would be curious to know if there was any expensed alcohol at taxpayers expense by anyone! Should never be under any circumstances in my opinion.):
ReplyDeleteMayor Rick Green: $93,962/$12,620
Coun. Jordan Bateman: $36,129/$3,129
Coun. Bev Dornan: $38,081/$6,888
Coun. Steve Ferguson: $38,081/$6,268
Coun. Charlie Fox: $38,273/$187
Coun. Mel Kositsky: $38,081/$7,688
Coun. Bob Long: $38,081/$4,241
Coun. Kim Richter: $36,129/$5,169
Coun. Grant Ward: $36,129/$6,100
Read more:
http://www.langleyadvance.com/business/Township+council+Travel+spending+queried/3227558/story.html#ixzz1bplUoQN0
Also read:
http://www.bclocalnews.com/surrey_area/langleytimes/news/118034319.html