Officials vote for pay raises

The Mesa Consolidated Water District board of directors has unanimously voted to increase its pay by 10%.

Instead of $189 per meeting, the members will now be paid $207 a meeting. They can be compensated for up to 10 meetings per month, which means the increase will cost about an extra $10,000 per year.

A majority of board members didn’t think a pay increase was a good idea when the issue came up last year, but this time around the vote was 5-0. Board member Shawn Dewane was one of the directors who changed his mind, speaking out against the increase last year, according to the meeting minutes, but favoring it this year.

Dewane said he couldn’t recall why he didn’t support a pay increase last year, but it could have been that business was better for him in the private sector, making the extra pay less important.

“It’s difficult economic times, but even those of us that are working are suffering the same economic consequences as everyone else,” Dewane said.

The price Costa Mesans have paid for water has increased an unusually large amount the last two years — 8% each year — but Administrative Services Manager Coleen Monteleone said that the increase in the board members’ stipends will only boost those costs about 0.1% more. Most of the cost increases are caused by the scarcity of water recently, according to Monteleone.

“It’s not going to have a significant effect on the cost of water,” she said.

All of the board members except Trudy Ohlig-Hall have jobs outside of their district positions, and some of them say that they’re already losing money any time they have to jettison their private sector duties to attend meetings.

“For me, I’m a working man. I work 80 hours a week to keep up with my regular job, and I have to take off time from work to go to meetings,” Bockmiller said.

Dewane says it is vital to the water district’s customers that the district attracts well-trained, bright people and if the money isn’t there it will be harder to do that.

Costa Mesa risks having a district that rubber stamps everything that comes before them if they don’t adequately pay the decision makers, Dewane said.

Ohlig-Hall agrees.

Costa Mesa resident Ed Guilmette thinks that the increase is irresponsible when other people and departments are being forced to cut back on costs.

“In this time of fiscal austerity for almost everyone, I just think this is an excessive increase for board members who are serving the public, supposedly, at least,” Guilmette said.

Ohlig-Hall says that often board members will attend more than 10 meetings per month because it behooves Costa Mesa to have representatives at county meetings and meetings for other agencies.

“Especially right now with the drought we have been very involved,” Ohlig-Hall said.

Three of the district board members are up for reelection, but all of them are running unopposed.

ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at [email protected].