Water District Board stands pat on stipends

PALMDALE — The Palmdale Water District Board of Directors will continue to receive the same stipends for attending meetings that they have for the past several years, deciding against any changes even though theirs are lower than the average for comparable districts.

“I think it’s more than sufficient” at the current level, Director Robert Alvarado said. “It will be irresponsible and crazy to raise our own stipends, especially in the middle of the Prop. 218 process (which sets the customers’ water rates for the next five years) just around the corner.”

Although there was no formal vote taken on the matter, the Board agreed not to make any changes to the stipends.

Looking at the director compensation for 12 similar districts that the Palmdale Water District has used for salary comparisons for other positions, Human Resources Director Jennifer Emery found that the Palmdale stipends ran lower than average.

Palmdale Water District directors receive $150 per meeting, up to the 10 meetings per month allowed by state law. The average of the districts surveyed was $195 per meeting, with two exceptional outliers of $264 and $390 per meeting removed from consideration, Emery said.

Three other districts in addition to Palmdale had stipends of $150 per meeting, and one had a lower rate of $140, according to the survey. The remaining districts all had stipends set at a higher rate.

All districts offer the same benefits as their staffs, and most allowed

for unlimited conference attendance, handled in the same manner as Palmdale does, by approving the major conference attendance at the start of the fiscal year.

“We try to keep our staff in the middle of the road” of compensation, Director Kathy Mac Laren said, and the current stipend places the directors at about the same position.

The discussion had been continued from an earlier meeting, waiting until all four current directors were available. (The Board has a vacant seat after the resignation of Director Marco Henriquez last month.)

The Board may still consider changes to how funds for each director are budgeted. In recent years, the budget has been designed to where each director was allotted an identical amount, to be used for stipends, benefits and conference attendance.

Instead, they may consider a set amount budgeted for the Board as a whole, to be distributed as needed among the individual directors. No such plan has yet been proposed.

To share your opinion on this article or any other article, write a letter to the editor and email it to editor@avpress.com or mail it to Letters to Editor, PO Box 4050, Palmdale CA 93590-4050.