DuPage County Forest Preserve Commissioner Joe Cantore, District 2 was absent again at today's (10/9/12) Forest Preserve Commission meeting. He and any other Commissioner get paid whether they attend the meetings or not. Their salary for this part-time job is $53,500 plus full time benefits, a tax payer subsidized pension, free cell phone and free laptop with 24 hour computer tech support. The salary and extra benefits are too high. The salary should be reduced to $25,000.
In addition the Commissioners should only be allowed a set number of paid absences. Let's start with 3 paid absences for the year. Then after the 3 absences they get their salary reduced by the percentage of time that was missed for the month. If there are 4 meetings that month and one meeting is missed than that month's salary payment is reduced by 25%. With only 6 Commissioners the tracking of attendance and paid salaries should be straight forward. Of course if the Commissioners attended the meetings like they are supposed to there would be no need for the extra work tracking their attendance.