VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The vote was unanimous. Metro Vancouver board members have decided to keep their pricey fee when they go to conferences and workshops.
The proposal was to cap the fee at $100 a day, down from the current $346 for attending external events.
Port Coquitlam mayor and board chair Greg Moore says the fee is because members have a great responsibility running a billion dollar organization and they deserve to be paid for it.
“If we were looking at the private sector and what a private sector CEO or board of directors makes to look after an organization of that size, we wouldn’t even be in the ball park in terms of what they’re doing.”
The fee rises to $700 if the event goes over four hours.
Jordan Bateman with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation says the Metro board’s decision is just another example of government waste.
“There was a conference a few months ago called the Zero Waste Conference, hosted by Metro Vancouver. They asked every single speaker and expect to waive their fees, they all did. Yet the five Metro Vancouver directors who showed up for it, they took home $2,000 in taxpayer fees.”
He says those on the board typically pull down an extra 20-thousand dollars a year for these external appearances, and calls the decision to keep the high fee “shameful”.
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You can’t blame this all on right leaning politicians. There are many on the Metro Board, and on it’s Zero Waste Committee who are truly left in their views. And yet, this group looks at ways to spend our tax dollars “as prudently as possible”. What they don’t look at are ways not to spend our tax dollars. They want to spend millions of dollars to build a new Waste to Energy incinerator, because of the need for more volume, without giving the opportunity for waste reduction strategies, such as PPP and the upcoming organics ban to reduce the volume of waste.
I’m a manager in the private sector and attend meetings in the Lower Mainland and sometimes in Northern BC. I don’t get anything extra at all for attending these meetings and would be embarrassed to demand extra compensation for just doing my job.
Metro Vancouver board members receive a failing grade for leadership.
And yet it’s the $45,000 a year Union Jobs that gets the public so angry?? These clowns blow through my “ANNUAL union wages” just socializing with each other!! To use the major flaw in our modern-day economy as their justification makes me SICK! Every manager expects to be a billionaire, all while running their staff into working poor minimum wage. If the majority of the public can’t afford to pay higher taxes, can’t afford to buy the stuff all our companies make, can’t afford new cars or anything else that drives our national economy… then what? Well, Global recession/depression, sound familiar? The whole implied statement of “We should be in the 1% too” drives me insane! To have incredible salaries AND all your life expenses paid for by tax money too? We should all be so lucky. Very simple, Worker Wages and Management Salaries, benefits and bonuses should be directly tied to each other, one being a direct percentage of the other PERIOD. Wouldn’t that shake it up and stop the multi-million salaries and golden-parachute insanity. Empower the Unions and share with the majority not the 1%’ers.
Keep yapping how Unions steal your money. You don’t see Adrian Dix living In West Van like Crusty Clark and Pattison. Unions share and I can’t name a Union head that lives anywhere close to all the RIGHT WING liars and cheats. Thank God for Unions or we would all be living close to the Patricia hotel as the Rich come flying by with their Mercedes and beamers. Wake Up people.