Would you do this for $25 an hour?

Wanted: Community leader willing to head up high-powered meetings, be the keynote speaker at public events, help oversee a staff of 171 and a budget $29 million. Must be available all day and into the evening, an be prepared to work at weekends. Pay: $1018.46 a week.

An employer putting an ad like this on a job site or in The Sydney Morning Heraldcould hardly expect to be bowled over by a rush of applicants. After all, a pay rate equivalent to $25 an hour is hardly the going fee for what amounts to being the equivalent of the chairman of a fairly major company. In fact, it amounts to just $10 above the national minimum wage.

Yet, it is what we expect of the Mayor of Strathfield and many public officials like him. 

Cr Tony Maroun was last month given a pay rise which took his annual salary to $52,960. 

And our councillors are paid even less, at just $16,640 a year.

Of course, being a councillor is not a “full-time” job.  But it is certainly demanding, and eats into hours normally given over to family and work commitments. Cr Paul Barron, chair of the Strathfield Council planning committee, told the Scenehe could hardly walk down the aisle of a local supermarket on a Saturday morning without being approached on parking matters or other issues.

The Scenewas given access to the mayor’s diary over the last three months, April, May and June. It shows he had an average of 31 events to deal with a month, including four each month on weekends and at least seven lasting two hours or more.

The range was breathtaking, from meeting with complainants over street parking to Meals On Wheels mayoral teas, economic development issues, compulsory conflict of interest training and attending gala dinners fostering Korean/Australian friendship.

In June, 15 of his events or meetings were after 5pm, and two started at 7am and 7.30am. Here’s the mayoral diary for Wednesday, June 8: 

l8am: Homebush Mainstreet Committee;

l  9.30am: Discussion over a development application for a house;

l 11am: Announcement of the new Strathfield SES headquarters; and

l  6.30pm: Dinner and speech for the Strathfield Youth Achievement Awards.

Doesn’t leave a lot of time for earning a living or seeing the family, does it? And in between days like this there are the inevitable but essential planning, traffic and other committee meetings. Not to mention prescribed training in government transparency and cost control.

So Strathfield’s mayor averaged 38 hours a month at public events alone. “Of course, these are just the periods when a mayor appears in public,” Cr Maroun explains.  “Before that appearance, there are many hours of meetings and discussions.

“Make no mistake: I am delighted to do the job for the people of Strathfield, and proud that I have been chosen to do it. But I am very conscious that I am lucky that my position, financial circumstances and supportive family mean that I can take so much time for public service. But think of a talented professional who is still climbing the ladder in his or her career, perhaps raising a young family and dealing with all the pressures that are involved with that. Do we want that kind of person on council? We most certainly do.

“But how can we ask them to give up perhaps two weeks in four, much of it in the evening and at weekends when a family’s needs are at their strongest, without any compensation for out-of-pocket expenses like babysitters and transport – let alone the risk to one’s career. I think, as the demands on councils grow, we need to think carefully about what kind of person we want dealing with the important issues in our community, and how we attract them.”

The rates of remuneration sparked an interesting debate during the councillors’ June meeting, with former mayor Cr Keith Kwon suggesting his colleagues should forgo a rise of $12 a week to demonstrate that holding the office of councillor was really all about community service. Kwon, a solicitor, elected to accept only the minimum councillor’s pay when he was mayor two years ago.

The problem as Cr Helen McLucas, a relative newcomer to the council, pointed out, is that many talented individuals – women with children, in particular – find it impossible to serve if they cannot cover the cost of babysitters and child care. So the danger is that only an elite band of well-off professionals can afford to serve. And that runs the risk that councillors could find it hard to stay in touch with the everyday problems of the ordinary citizens whom they represent.

Just how heavy is the burden? Councillors’ responsibilities are outlined in section 232 of the Local Government Act:

l  Provide a civic leadership role in guiding the development of the community strategic plan for the area and to be responsible for monitoring the implementation of the council’s delivery program;

l  Play a key role in the creation and review of the council’s policies and objectives and criteria relating to the exercise of the council’s regulatory functions;

l  Review the performance of the council and its delivery of services, and the delivery program and revenue policies of the council;

l  Represent the interests of the residents and ratepayers; and

l  Provide leadership and guidance to the community to facilitate communication between the community and the council.

According to the Local Government and Shires Association of NSW (LGSA), which has been campaigning for years for better remuneration: “Councillors are managing increasingly complex and diverse constituencies and influences. Councillors also face an immense task juggling their council’s workload, family responsibilities as well as their paid work and often forgo paid work and study to meet their council responsibilities.

“Such a significant time involvement is not appropriately recompensed through the current remuneration levels.”

The LGSA claims mayors should get 80 per cent of the salary of a state MP and ordinary councillors 50 per cent. That would give Strathfield’s mayor $108,912 a year, and councillors $68,070 - a rise of almost 100 per cent and 400 per cent respectively.

There are, however, few supporters for such
a massive pay hike. Councillors don’t have many friends, despite the hard work, long hours and onerous responsibilities for unglamorous yet essential services such as rubbish collection, parking and planning regulation. Perhaps this explains why there are often so few quality candidates at local government elections.

But in the end, the best way to judge the fairness or otherwise of a councillor’s fees is to ask yourself one very simple question: Would you do the job for the same amount?

If the answer is no, then that says a lot about what we expect from our council members.