If you only want to work part-time and make oodles of cash, has 
the City of Vernon got a deal for you. As of Monday, council is looking for an individual to serve as real estate manager. They will manage the city's land assets that are leased out, as well as negotiating the purchasing and selling of property. It all sounds rather mundane until you get further into the details. The three-year position consists of 28 hours per week and $75,000 a year for both wages and benefits. Based on my rudimentary math skills, that's $51 an hour. Now the city's argument is someone is needed to deal with its empire, everything from the parkade and the Coldstream Hotel property to negotiating with people who want to snap up an old road right-of-way. Apparently considerable money has been going towards consultants and having someone permanently on the payroll will reduce those costs.
the City of Vernon got a deal for you. As of Monday, council is looking for an individual to serve as real estate manager. They will manage the city's land assets that are leased out, as well as negotiating the purchasing and selling of property. It all sounds rather mundane until you get further into the details. The three-year position consists of 28 hours per week and $75,000 a year for both wages and benefits. Based on my rudimentary math skills, that's $51 an hour. Now the city's argument is someone is needed to deal with its empire, everything from the parkade and the Coldstream Hotel property to negotiating with people who want to snap up an old road right-of-way. Apparently considerable money has been going towards consultants and having someone permanently on the payroll will reduce those costs. That may all be true, but a T-bone paycheque for chuck steak hours is mind-boggling. At the same time council members were raising their hands in favour of this one, a steady stream of residents were heading into city hall to pay their property taxes. I wonder how many of them have that kind of dough rolling into their coffers? Probably very few. Coun. Barry Beardsell, who was the only one to oppose the motion, is right when he says the city is sending the wrong message to residents. "It's just an add-on to the bureaucracy and it's a fairly expensive one," he said. Those who backed the expenditure are trying to distance themselves from the $75,000. "That's just the upper limit. We could get someone in there for less," said Mayor Wayne Lippert. That's possible, but highly unlikely. I have come to learn that the upper limit quickly gets written in stone, especially once anyone interested in the job has seen the figure published in the media. You aren't going to ask for less when you know there is more sitting in the cookie jar. ertainly a case can be made that the high-end salary is necessary to attract someone with considerable skills, especially when they could be doing quite well in today's red hot real estate market. But there are people throughout the community, including right inside city hall, who have equal or greater responsibilities that don't see compensation anywhere close to that. And what about those folks who stock store shelves, pour coffee or flip burgers? The pay isn't great but our economy and society would grind to a halt without them. I don't doubt that a real estate manager will ultimately prove beneficial to city operations, but all this decision does is reinforce the public perception that politicians like to spend, spend, spend. But enough of that, I've just looked at my T-4 and I need to get a resume into city hall.
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