For themselves (technically for those elected in 2014, but the board is mostly incumbents, so yeah...) Thoughts? Please don't respond if you can't take 3 minutes to read the article, or you're going to respond with some dumbhick ignorant response: http://www.11alive.com/news/article/266645/40/POLL--Atlanta-City-Council-approves-52-pay-increase Reddit link - http://www.reddit.com/r/Atlanta/comments/1484v4/atlanta_city_council_approves_52_pay_increase_for/ There are pros and cons, but I'm generally against (along with 95% of poll voters, per the website). I do have some increased respect for Kasim Reed, though, who imo is the best mayor Atlanta's had in a long time.
The raise would put them right at 60,000 a year which I think is a reasonable amount of money for them to make. That being said, they shouldn't be able to vote themselves a pay raise.
If it'll encourage the members of the council to do a better job, not saying that they aren't doing a good job, why not. Same can be said for teaching staff in our schooling systems. In my opinion, I can't seem to find a negative outcome, if it's approved by the Mayor. Enlighten me perhaps...
I am not against it because the amount they were getting paid was pretty ridiculous. but like Ball, I dont think they should be able to vote for their own raise. Then again, we all know the public probably would of voted against it just because half the people only look at the 52% increase.
Brett and I were discussing, if you're going to give yourself a raise to that level, it should be a full time position. We both agree that they do a full-time job, but this is still classified as a part time position. If you want to pay them that much, do not allow them to have another job w/ a source of income, as it will leave the possibility of skewing money in the form of corruption. I do think they were underpaid, but they only offered a 2% raise to parts of other public service officials and took a 52% raise for themselves. Granted, it's only $300k / year total, which wouldn't go far in other services, but it's more the principle of the matter. And trancetto, schools are paid with property taxes - it's a completely different budget issue, though the concerns are still the same.
The last thing needed is money for schools, what they need is accountability and parents who give a damn about their child's education.
yeah, but that's not something that can be voted on. If it were somehow possible, do you think these worthless 'parents' would ever vote on something like that? cmon breel, you're in the ghetto...do you think anybody around jonesboro would vote for anything that didn't involve stuff being handed out to them?
I don't think I approve. A part time job making 60K a year? that is more than I make working a full time job around 50 hours a week. Hell, maybe I've found what I want to do next...
I think it needs to be voted on by the people not the city council. Also, it needs to be performance based. For example, no balanced budget no pay raise.