We can hear the tongue clucking as the front page hits the doorsteps in New Westminster. "Hey, honey, look at how much money the top brass at city hall make, can you believe it? That's where our taxes go."
And you can't blame folks for thinking city staffers earn their weight in gold. New Westminster is a fairly small city as cities go, and salaries and wages do make up the majority of expenses in the city.
But are city employees - particularly at the management level - paid too much?
Yes, and no. Here's the yes part - as with most workplaces, managers' salaries are pegged (at least partly) a good percentage higher than the employees below the manager. It seems reasonable that the folks at the top who carry the responsibility for running whole departments - and taking the political heat when things go wrong - earn a good chunk of change more than the underlings. Managerial stress in city halls - or big business - has increased as the economy has shrunk and expectations have risen for services and products that perform. It's no picnic trying to juggle it all.
And here's the no part - should any manager be earning close to $200,000 a year when times are tough and city hall keeps hiking taxes? If taxpayers are expected to put up with potholes, higher taxes and fewer "free" services, why should city hall employees just keep getting salary hikes? And let us not for-get, those same high-paid city managers also earn excellent pensions and have royal benefit plans.
The reality is that salaries are seldom based on entirely rational foundations. Supply, demand, tradition, classism and education, are just some of the factors that contribute to where you land on a pay scale.
Most of the time we don't spend a lot of time thinking about why some people get paid what they do - unless of course it's about our own pay, or if our taxes are paying for it.
