Trustees to delay 67% pay increase for themselves

You’ll recall that, last month, the SOCCCD trustees were all set to dramatically increase their monthly stipend, from $400 per meeting to $750. (See Trustees set to nearly double their stipend.) 

Ah, but the media caught wind of that, and so, prior to the meeting, they tabled the item.

The item's back, but with a new recommendation.

Check out page 7 of the SOCCCD Board of Trustees meeting agenda for Tuesday night: SOCCCD Board Agenda (pdf).

Item 6.17 is Mathur's original proposal to boost trustees’ compensation per meeting from $400 to $750. (See graphic above.) As the OC Reg’s Marla Jo Fisher reported (see), that’s a 67% increase in pay.

Impolitic.

During the closed session portion of December's meeting, trustees had a preliminary vote on the union's proposed contract, and it was approved. As you know, since then, trustee Tom Fuentes has pulled out all the stops in his effort to prevent a faculty pay adjustment (a 9% increase over three years—but 5% of this is a state-wide COLA from last year) on Tuesday.

Last we heard, that item has been pulled.

I looked deeper into the trustee stipend agenda item—on page 257!—and found that, in fact, the new recommendation (for Tuesday night) is to delay this increase "until the economic situation becomes more certain...." See graphic below.