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If Milton is big enough to pay these senior staff salaries it is too big to manage salaries by the seat-of-the-pants method.

There must be a process, approval authorities, and a table of salary ranges. If these tools are available to Council now, they are certainly not visible and current councillors seem to be avoiding the question. The written salary management process and the table of salary ranges must be public documents.

I hope the candidates are adding this to their to-do list.

As happened in the past, the town reviews a report of similar sized municipalities and reviews the salaries of their top officials to come up with an increase/pay amount for ours.

While their reports state they are well below what other municipalities offer in compensation, its doesnt guarantee cities like Brampton, Mississauga, Vaughan, Oakville, Burlington are being responsible.

Its like saying "they did it too...but we did it less."

Our country is suffering from a downturn in the economy for the last 3 years and while signs show a slight improvement, there is still a long way to go. The next few years will show if our economy takes off...or drops back. Businesses are scared to invest, hire more people, take on more jobs etc while all of this is going on. Lots of companies have cut back staff, frozen salaries and limited expenses. Governments are the only industry that have done the opposite.

Ive stated before...we should pay people a fair salary for the work they do. I dont want to discount the work that Milton town staff does for us during this rapid time period of growth. SOME restraint has to be shown when it comes to the publics tax dollars.

_________________
Mike Cluett
Local/Regional Councillor
Wards 1,6,7 & 8

Website | Email mike@mikecluett.ca | Cell (647) 888-9032 | Facebook Page | | Twitter @Mike_Cluett

I was at the Mayor's Breakfast where a key theme was that we run the town like a business. Well, I'm from the business sector (retired 2008 after 32 years) and I didn't get double digit increases over the last years of my career. In fact, most salary increases didn't even keep pace with inflation! I guess this means that the town really isn't run like a business?

I don't want to pass judgment on the value of any town staff for now as we only have a salary number and no other details on job responsibility, contribution to the effective management of the town etc. (although we probably should have access to this information).

At this point I can say that I don't think any CAO, CEO, President, CFO (in the private or public sector)... is worth double or triple or more what the average worker earns. I know all the arguments about recruiting and retaining the best... but I honestly don't see how the best are worth that much more.

I would propose a clear pay for performance formula where any increase is tied to cost savings, productivity improvement, quality etc.

As was said, just because some other town or city pays this much doesn't mean this is the reason we have to in Milton.

Gerry Marsh
Candidate for Mayor

Gerry, I'm all for pay for performance and a clear disclosure of increases and why. Like you, I've also been in the private section for my 16 year career and even in the best of those times I've rarely seen more than a 3 or 4 percent increase. The few increases that were over that were actually early in my career and more for salary adjustment to keep up with changes in the base pay value for new hires so that existing staff weren't paid less than new employees!

I was disturbed by Major Krantz's comments that he couldn't recall why Mario received a double digit increase. If he earned it, you'd think that level of performance would be memorable.....

Like most of us taxpayers, I'm on the outside looking in and have no special access to town or council affairs. That being said I firmly believe in open and transparent government and would work to implement this.

As I mentioned, I'd like to see a true pay for performance program in place for all town staff and elected officials. Understand that there are likely Provincially mandated guidelines for some compensation packages and as I understand it most of the town staff is unionized and paid according to negotiated contract. This doesn't preclude creative interpretation of current guidelines and strong contract negotiation in future including performance, productivity improvement and cost reduction expectations. The mayor should also be a strong voice lobbying at the provincial level on provincially mandated municipal affairs.

Town council needs to be pro-active managers of the towns affairs and not just followers of staff recommendations. By this I mean developing more detailed guidelines for the towns objectives in all aspects of town business (this doesn't mean that council should simply ignore expert staff recommendations though).

The only "Code of Conduct" I could find was procedural:

http://www.milton.ca/execserv/bylaws200 ... By-law.pdf

and not behavioral which if lacking needs to be built!

Gerry Marsh
Candidate for Mayor