The population of the region may be declining, a number of the schools closing and the student numbers dropping, but one thing will remain constant for School District 52 in the next few years, the number of School Board trustees will remain the same.
In one of their last items of business for 2010, The School District 52 board chose not to downsize itself, voting against a motion from trustee Terri Lynne Huddlestone, who had put forward the prospect of reducing the make up of the number of School District trustees from seven to five.
I notice that SD52 hasn’t published their Statement of Financial Information in a readily accessible location on their website for the last two years (last one is 2007/08). It provides a handy compendium of how much elected officals and others are paid and other details that provincially funded bodies must to disclose to citizens in a public document.
I don’t imagine that the trustees would be very enthusiastic about voting away honouraria of about $10K each for two of their board members.
Or maybe they have, but it’s hidden in the spaghetti that is the SD52 website.[/quote]
Hence the qualifier “readily accessible”. The SFI for the last couple of years might be buried the minutes. I sometimes wonder if burying public information is a bit of an in-house project for well paid public officials around town.
The one thing I read about the reasoning for NOT downsizing was that if they shrink the number of trustees to five, a quorum could be reached with three people, meaning that a measly two people could therefore make budget changes etc.
How much does a trustee earn anyway? Is it a few thousand dollars that is really only a drop in the bucket when compared to the 22 million dollar budget? I mean, there’s a difference between fiscal prudence and fiscal irresponsibility when it comes to ensuring the budget is handled properly. Not that I’m saying the budget has been handled properly…no no no no no no no no no no…no, I’m not saying that to be clear, but if we don’t like who’s handling the budgets, we can vote them out and vote in somebody better (in theory). Would the city save money if we got rid of the councillors and let the mayor run the show because it’s “cheaper”?
Simply voting in “fewer” trustees might not be the best way to save money, IMHO. Something needs to change at the Board Office.