This past week has brought devastating news for area residents and the communities they live in.
West Fraser is laying off 210 workers in the South Cariboo, permanently closing its Chasm mill and eliminating the third shift at its 100 Mile House facility, on top of major cuts in production across B.C.
Canfor is closing its Vavenby sawmill, eliminating 170 jobs.
Tolko is halting work at its Quest sawmill in Quesnel, with 150 workers losing their jobs.
Louisiana Pacific is shutting down its the Peace Valley OSB mill in Fort St. John, putting 190 employees out of work.
The Norbord OSB mill in 100 Mile House is being shuttered as well, leaving 160 people looking for work.
Fortunately, the sun continues to shine and the good times are still rolling at Prince George City Hall.
The city has released its 2018 annual Statements of Financial Information in advance of city council's upcoming meeting Monday, which includes the names of city employees who received remuneration (basic pay plus all other compensation, such as overtime, vacation payouts and so on) of more than $75,000.
If you recall the 2017 statements revealed some shocking details about the soaring salaries among the city's senior administrators over the previous three years. Then came the appalling fact those same managers collected overtime at double their regular hourly rate during the Cariboo wildfire evacuation crisis, even while they were asking residents to volunteer their time to help and only paying unionized city employees time-and-a-half overtime, as per their collective agreements.
Those details in The Citizen seemed to have sparked a change in how the city is reporting the pay of city staff over that $75,000 threshold. Up until this year, those financial details were just a name and total remuneration plus expenses, making it difficult to separate base pay from other forms of income. The 2018 numbers break out base pay, overtime payout, vacation payout and all other compensation, leading up to remuneration, plus expenses.
The wage increases and the overtime revealed by The Citizen last summer also led Mayor Lyn Hall and the six city councillors who ran for re-election lin October - Frank Everitt, Garth Frizzell, Murry Krause, Terri McConnachie, Susan Scott and Brian Skakun - to all solemnly declare at public forums that they would welcome a review of the city's overtime policy for senior administrators.
All of those incumbents were re-elected to city council but eight months into their four-year term, there has been no announced change to that overtime policy.
Not only that but the big raises are still coming to the top people.
The 2018 base pay for city manager Kathleen Soltis, the city's senior bureaucrat, was $256,930.39. In 2017, her base pay was $237,487.10.
In other words, Soltis received an 8.2 per cent wage increase, totalling $19,443.29 last year.
That's on top of the 3.3 per cent increase she received in 2017 from her 2016 base pay of $229,827.
Contrast that 11.5 per cent wage increase in just two years to the 6.75 per cent pay raise over four years granted to the city's unionized staff represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees.
While the city manager decides without city council oversight what senior administrators are paid, mayor and council have direct authority over what their city manager receives in pay and benefits.
Perhaps local taxpayers should be grateful city council only increased the city manager's salary by 11.5 per cent over the past two years. An outside consultant hired by the city to review pay levels of the city manager and senior recommendation recommended a 15 per cent raise for the city manager in a November 2017 report.
Perhaps local taxpayers should be grateful Soltis declared no overtime in 2018, compared to the $16,500.40 she received for 70 hours of overtime at an hourly rate of $235.72 in 2017.
Perhaps local taxpayers should be asking why city council has approved property tax increases totalling 12.56 per cent (that doesn't include compound interest) over the past four years.
Perhaps local taxpayers should be asking city council why their top bureaucrat deserves an 8.2 per cent pay increase in one year while nearly 1,000 Central Interior residents working in the forest sector have been thrown out of work so far this year.
There is no universe where those numbers add up, except on the fifth floor of Prince George City Hall.
-- Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
