FOULDS: Is there fat to cut? Salaries to slash? It really is all relative

Kamloops city council has approved spending $13,000 on an advertising campaign to get you and your fellow taxpayers involved in the budget-deliberation process.

The cynic among us might offer up as the first budget idea: Don’t waste 13 grand of our money on telling us about three public meetings on the budget.

Public-information meetings on city budget planning are usually about as popular as offers for free root canals — and about as well attended.

That city council has added to the number of meetings and has decided to spend a fair bit of money promoting them tells me our elected representatives sincerely want the people to come out and tell them how to spend our money.

It’s far too easy to call for the city to cut the fat at city hall, to reduce spending, to reduce the number of city staffers; it’s much more difficult to pinpoint the fat at city hall that needs trimming, to select which services deserve less funding, to choose which departments should make do with fewer bodies.

That being said, the initial eyebrow-raising reaction from many when we in the media publish municipal salaries — many of them in the very well-to-do-range — is understandable.

According to Venture Kamloops (its very existence a bone of contention among some critics of city spending), the median household income in Kamloops is $64,000, based on Statistics Canada’s 2006 census figures.

When those families, struggling with nominal or no pay raises in the past few years and faced with a dizzying array of increasing taxes and fees at all levels of government (go online to kamloopsthisweek.com and click on the “business” tab to get a depressing reminder of just how many things will cost more in 2012), see various city managers earning double and triple what they bring home annually, calling for spending controls at city hall is a natural reaction.

As always, everything is relative, including city salaries and spending.

For example, outgoing chief administrative officer Randy Diehl was paid $196,000 in 2010, which is generally on par with what was made by those running the similar-sized cities of Nanaimo ($203,000) and Prince George ($194,000).

However, the fact Diehl’s salary mushroomed by $27,000 — from $169,000 in 2007 to $196,000 in 2009 — could be a bone of contention with taxpayers who only encounter a raise in the taxes and fees they pay.

Byron McCorkell, Kamloops’ director of parks, recreation and culture, was paid $149,000 in 2009, quite a bit more than his counterpart in Prince George ($118,000), but perhaps a bargain when considering Nanaimo paid two people, at a combined cost of $230,000 to cover parks, recreation and cultural services.

Again, the fact taxpayers paid their parks, recreation and cultural services director $20,000 more in 2010 than in 2007 ($128,000) could be ammunition for a debate on the escalation of salaries at city hall.

However, similar salary data can be mined in other positions

Finance director, development director, public-works director, mayor — higher and lower salaries can be found in similar-sized cities in B.C.

Perhaps, with the Great Recession still in force, the city should consider economic belt-tightening such as adopted by the provincial government and institute zero-based increases for both its union (once the current contract expires) and management.

Being seen by Joe Sixpack as sharing the pain (however painful a frozen six-figure salary may be) is, at the very least, an important step, even if it is largely symbolic.

Kamloops city council wants to reduce the property-tax hike to as low a figure as possible, while maintaining services residents want.

Every city council aims to do that.

How it gets there is the debate, one in which city hall wants input from you.

Feb. 28, March 6 and March 13 are the dates of the public-information meetings on the budget, to be held in the Parkside Lounge at Interior Savings Centre.

A suggestion to city council — use the city website to promote this.

It’s free but, as of yesterday, nary a word could be found on the main page.