I was looking at the scheduled government meetings for this week and noticed that Roanoke City Council was voting on a raise for the city Manager, Chris Morrill.
Even thought I am a County Supervisor – I am interested in what happens around the Valley in other governments……and I guess nothing surprises me anymore – Did you know that they are voting on 5% increase for the Roanoke City Manager, Chris Morrill, which will take his salary to $210,000.
Compare this to the per capita income in Roanoke City of $22,530, with the median household income of $36,422 based on the last census numbers in 2010. Even if we increase it to $40,000 for household income to do our best to update this figure – the servant of the people is still making over 5X those he serves…….
The hypocrisy here is that in our country we always disparage the rich 1% — well isn’t this interesting that our “public servants” – those that are here to serve the rest of us are solidly in that 1% and using hard earned taxpayer dollars to get there and stay there.
I guess ultimately what is really sad is that Roanoke City Council – those that have been elected by the people are the ones voting on this to make it happen – but again no surprise here since back in July of last year they gave themselves a 10% raise (proposed by Councilman Dave Trinkle) — this had to be lowered from the 15-28% raise that Councilman Bill Bestpitch had proposed earlier.
Just thought you would be interested in knowing how your hard earned tax dollars are being spent.
Al Bedrosian
