Trustees' raise was public

I read Stan Cameron's letter publicly denouncing the PDSB trustees for voting themselves a raise to the whopping sum of $26,011.80 per year. In his letter, Cameron comments that he finds it unusual that "our local trustee didn't reveal that she and her colleagues just gave themselves a raise of over $20,000." What I do find unusual is that one of Cameron's initial activities in his campaign was to find out exactly what pay a trustee takes home. Would he be running for this position at the previous rate of $5,000 per year, which our current trustee has done for the past nine years?

As far as Cameron's facts, that he found out on the Internet (a reliable source of truth), that the raises were approved by the trustees based on a meeting between the trustees and the Citizen's Advisory Committee. For the record, pay increases to trustees across Ontario were implemented by the Ontario government. Former education minister, Gerard Kennedy, was responsible for increasing the pay levels to trustees to ensure maintenance of the level of quality of the school board trustees.

In short, the trustees did not vote themselves a pay raise, they were simply kept well informed of the situation, as were the general public through various sources of media.

Of course, should Cameron's campaign prove victorious, I am sure this subject will disappear, since he will be the beneficiary. This should come in handy after his length of time on strike at Centennial College, for more money.

Jonathan Weeden

Caledon