Random Access

It was a few years ago.
A member of the public, upset with Ward 7 Dufferin-Peel District Separate School Trustee Bruno Iannicca over a school issue, asked him (with great derision) how much his salary was costing the taxpayers.
He looked stunned when Iannicca told him he earned a $5,000-a-year honorarium.
The man collected his thoughts for a moment.
"Then you're a bigger f...ing idiot than I thought," he said.
In his own rude and inappropriate way, he had a point. It does seem ridiculous that anyone would run for a political office that pays so little and requires so much.
School trustees have been largely emasculated since the provincial government took away their ability to raise local taxes.
You wonder why the Mike Harris, who seemed to have a vendetta against all things educational, didn't just do away with local boards totally, since he took away virtually all of their powers.
The explanation, of course, is that the government kept the trustees around so MPPs wouldn't have to answer all those parental complaints about school busing, and the government would have somebody to blame for all of deficiencies, real and perceived, of the school system.
It is, in fact, rather miraculous that so many trustees have stuck around through the Harris years and beyond. The continued dedication of veteran trustees such as Ruth Thompson, Janet McDougald, Esther O'Toole and Iannicca puts the lie to the suggestion they were in it for the money, which at one time reached $25,000 for trustees.
It's interesting to go to the City's website to check out the candidates running for the Nov. 13 election. You'll find 20 people registered to run for council and two for trustee. The two trustee candidates are both for the public board in Ward 9, where Sue McFadden is leaving to run for Ward 10 councillor.
Obviously, they want to tell people they're running as soon as possible.
Generally speaking, however, there is no motivation for trustee candidates to register early, because the main benefit to registering is to be able to collect donations for your campaign.
Who in their right mind is going to spend any more money than they have to win a job where you'll make five grand and listen to people complain about all the funding problems in a school system that you can't fix?
The car allowance for a City councillor is more than three times higher than the SALARY of a trustee.
In my business, you're not supposed to say this out loud, but the simple fact is that trustees deserve a big raise.
The Liberals promised they would look at the issue when they were elected in 2005 and Education Minister Gerard Kennedy is now finally getting around to it.
It's easy to see why he wasn't in a hurry. You can already imagine the headlines: "Province hands trustees 100 per cent raise."
"Trustee salaries leap by $10,000."
One last thought. Do we really want the board of directors of a corporation with a $1 billion budget being paid $5,000 a year?