UGLINESS AT COUNCIL

It’s bad enough that Calgary city council ignored good advice. But its shoddy treatment of the people providing the guidance can only be described as ugly. Council’s discourteous behaviour toward a volunteer panel tasked with reviewing their pay and benefits ultimately shows contempt for all taxpaying citizens.

The five panel members spent seven months of their own time, without pay, to examine the issue. They drove to city hall for meetings that were then cancelled, they had to pay out of their own pockets to receive city documents to help them in their task, they endured the “mind-numbing, picayune rules of city committees,” according to panel chair Peter Bowal.

But those unprofessional annoyances hardly compare to the hostile and rude treatment they received May 29 when their recommendations were debated and voted on. In a column in the Calgary Herald on June 17, Bowal described the daylong series of snubs and snark they were subjected to: told to show up at 9:30 but made to wait to the end of the day after school classes, poems and hopscotch were dealt with. Then when the report was finally on the table, councillors criticized the panel as biased and said it didn’t consider the “ridiculous” hours and effort spent getting elected.

These five people with backgrounds in human resources, business and law diligently didn’t just pull numbers out of a hat or embark on some sort of personal agenda. They reviewed compensation packages in other similarly sized municipalities.

With many Calgarians out of work and businesses suffering, the panel felt the time was right for a correction. Instead of having the highest-paid elected officials in Canada, the panel recommended closer to the 75th percentile. It also felt the spread between mayor and councillor should be narrowed. They recommended against continuing to pay a transition allowance to mayor and councillors who quit or are defeated.

“There is no parallel for these parting gifts anywhere else outside of Canadian politics,” Bowal said.

But it was clear to him from the comments at the meeting councillors felt “entitled” to their pay and benefits.

It appears city councillors have forgotten they are in public service. It’s not meant to be a 9-3 job, with a high salary and a soft landing if they quit or the voters decide they’re not acting in the public interest.

Deriding volunteers over their compensation seems more in their own interest than Calgary’s. The electorate may just feel entitled to rectify that come October.