Upper managers in civil service – and the people hiring them – are generally tone deaf when it comes to the wages they pocket.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, being tone deaf is “having or showing an obtuse insensitivity or lack of perception particularly in matters of public sentiment, opinion, or taste.”
One look at the province’s Public Sector Salary Disclosure list for wages paid out in 2023 underlines just how deaf they are.
Michael Duben, CAO for the Municipality of Chatham-Kent: $319,277.
Gary Conn, chief of the Chatham-Kent Police Service: $265,545.
And then there is Thomas Kelly, a former municipal general manager who was nearly named CAO: $240,746.
Tone deaf is not realizing how the rest of us live, especially those on fixed and limited incomes.
According to provincial figures, a single person on the Ontario Disability Support Program receives up to $1,308 per month “for basic needs and shelter.”
Duben made nearly that – $1,222 – in one day (based on a five-day work week).
For Conn, he made $135.66 per hour, based on that same 37.5-hour week. It takes him less than 1.3 work days to make what someone on ODSP is provided with for an entire month.
The most annoying element here is what Kelly is being paid to not work for the municipality. In fact, he hasn’t worked for C-K in more than two years. Once touted as the man to replace Don Shropshire as CAO in November 2021, Kelly was gone by mid-March 2022 and municipal officials didn’t go into details over why.
Instead, they kept paying him. And paying him.
Officials say he won’t be on the Sunshine List next year. OK, but that is after he pocketed more than half a million dollars to NOT work for the municipality.
Can taxpayers blame these aforementioned individuals for such largesse? Perhaps to some extent, as they successfully negotiated these salaries.
However, the real people to blame are the folks who agreed to such massive salaries. That falls at the feet of municipal council and the police services board.
And a final note, all the big earners here are paid by we, the taxpayers, out of our much smaller paycheques.
