EDITORIAL – Giving up trustee stipends deserves admiration but…

An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.

A COUPLE OF Kamloops school trustees deserve our admiration for taking a stand on the cost of education in the district by relinquishing their own pay.

On the initiative of Trustee Joe Kang, he and Trustee Cole Hickson have vowed to turn their stipends back to School District 73 via donation.

Kang wanted the entire board to stop accepting their paycheques in recognition of challenges faced by taxpayers. That didn’t fly, with Kang being informed a motion he proposed to that effect was out of order because it was against board policy.

My understanding of the reason for that is that remuneration for board members is established by bylaw and any change would require bylaw amendments that would affect future board members, and that would result in a bit of a rigmarole.

At any rate, Kang was informed that if he wished to forego his own paycheque, he could turn it into a donation to the district’s coffers. This he decided to do, with Hickson joining him.

This is no small gesture — trustee stipends have expanded quite nicely in recent years to the point where they have reached the healthy sum of $27,781 annually. I venture to say very few would give that up.

(By the way, Kang and Hickson could choose another avenue for foregoing their pay. They could make personal donations to various community charities and causes instead of to the education bureaucracy.)

But, alas, despite their honourable intentions, their gesture will have very little impact on the real world. While the amount of an individual trustee’s stipend is not insubstantial, it doesn’t amount to that much in comparison to overall spending on the local education system.

Kang might think he is sending a message of the need for moderation on spending but that message will be lost on the general public, just as it has been rejected by other members of the school board.

Had the entire board taken up the challenge and unanimously returned their stipends, the public and maybe even the provincial government would have taken notice. The actions of a single trustee or two, not so much.

No, the correct reason for such a gesture has to be based on principle, not on hopes it will have any impact on the bottom line. If Kang and Hickson believe rejecting their stipends is simply the right, principled thing to do, they can sleep well at night, and good on them.

But if they hope it will somehow effect change — “making a statement,” as Kang put it — they’ll be disappointed. Regardless, they deserve credit for putting their money where their mouths are.

Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor.  He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.