After reading another story discussing Vancouver City Manager Eric Holmes and his pay increase, I felt compelled to comment. A 3.5 percent increase is a good raise for meeting expectations, but nothing to write home about. Vancouver is Washington’s fourth-largest city, and to attract and retain the right leadership to professionally run it, the salary and performance pay increases must be appropriate. The economy is tough here locally, but why is it wrong for Vancouver’s CEO to earn a small pay raise of approximately $5,000 when it’s OK to have considered spending millions of dollars for a baseball team that does little for Vancouverites or to have spent millions of dollars in planning costs for a new Interstate 5 bridge that’s still on the drawing boards?
You get what you pay for, and the city manager position is no exception.
His pay package is reasonable considering the level of responsibility and the number of citizens who depend on him making the correct decisions. Instead of laying on the guilt trip, the people of Vancouver should be proud to have a leader with integrity who has earned his pay increase, and not a leader who has instead earned a jail sentence.
Chris Forzano
La Center
