March 20, 2013Dear Sir,After reading the article in today’s Royal Gazette, ‘Report: City Hall team should be paid five figure salaries’ — the only question that I have to ask is, what took them so long? No one should be surprised at this latest development as it was bound to happen. In reading the blogs in The Royal Gazette concerning the above article, 98 percent are against this move and rightly so. One blogger writing under the name of Truth Seeker took my attention and so I have posted it here for your readers. He/she says it all in a nutshell and I agree with his/her sentiments. It is as follows:Truth Seeker: March 20, 2013 9.43am.“Can someone in a position of responsibility at the Corporation please explain how the Mayor and his members have managed to spend the tax payers’ money on commissioning a report on the need for salaries for themselves in complete secrecy despite the fact that they post their minutes online and they hold open meetings at which they are supposed to allow the public to hear what they are doing. I guarantee there is no mention of either the commissioning of this report or even any discussion as to whether or not to award salaries to themselves in the online minutes, nor is there any mention of any consultation with the City tax payers who will be expected to pay these salaries, none.“We also need to know if it is true that the Mayor and his members have already set aside almost a million dollars in this year’s budget alone to meet their “expenses”. I challenge the Mayor to answer this simple question. Basically, what we have here is a small group of people who would never have been elected in the first place if the vast majority of City tax payers were still able to vote. This group is holding meetings behind closed doors, awarding themselves salaries and setting the monies aside even before it is passed into law.“The Government needs to act now. They do not need to completely disband the Corporation of Hamilton. They need to return the vote to all City taxpayers who own or operate businesses (persons who live in the City would not lose their voting rights). They need to do so as a matter of urgency and then call for new elections within three months of the franchise being returned to those who are clearly entitled to have it. In the meantime Government should make it crystal clear to the Mayor and his members that it is against the law to award themselves salaries of any kind without the approval of Parliament. The City tax payers need to immediately start a petition demanding to have their voting rights returned. The time to take action is now.”Mr Acting Editor, this blogger is correct in everything mentioned, and one of the most ludicrous things is that a homeless person living in the Salvation Army hostel can vote in the Corporation of Hamilton elections, but the businessman, paying taxes in the City of Hamilton cannot vote as this right was taken away from him for obvious reasons. If this is not a stacked deck of cards than what is? Mr Acting Editor, this is another group of self-serving people that need to be voted out of office.PAT FERGUSON