WLKM Radio 95.9 FM
St. Joseph County Road Commission members will receive a pay raise for the first time in more than two decades.
During last week’s St. Joseph County Board of Commissioners meeting, a rate of $4,680 per year was increased to $7,500 per member. The new rate covers all regular, monthly board meetings.
In addition, road commission board members will receive an annual cost-of-living increase.
The new rate, to take effect Jan. 1, is the first for road commission board members since 2000.
A study of road commission board member salaries statewide shows the new rate puts St. Joseph County in the middle of the state’s 83 counties in terms of board member compensation.
We stopped teaching civics in school long ago. For good reason. The powers that be did not want future voters to know how government is supposed to work.
Any board, commission or committee membership is not a secondary employment or side hustle, but a volunteering to civic duty. Civic service eventually elicited a stipend to cover actual cost of attendance so non-wealthy volunteers couls serve without suffering financial loss, not personal profit. Comparison of what larger civic apostates recieve in order to increase one’s own stipend to a profit goes against the intent and spirit of civic service. But Americans have embraced that only money proves worth or respect. So our self-governance suffers and will so continue to suffer.