For those asking, because, goodness, you hate all politicians (and I’ve been asked three times today before 10am), and further to this blog entry about the newest debate about raises, the increase in remuneration I received earlier this year funded an offering of the Shape Your Life program at Underdogs Boxing Club.
In the interest of full disclosure, yes, Underdogs Boxing Club is an organization I founded, for which I am the President of the Board of Directors, and where I’m also the Head Coach. It is also run entirely by volunteers, and – for the Shape Your Life program – both myself and my assistant coach, as well as the trauma counsellor volunteer our time to co-ordinating and running the program. In fact, I volunteer roughly 20 hours per week to coaching at and running Underdogs Boxing Club, as I coach nine of the 13 classes per week that we offer, and I take care of all of the administration, social media, etc. The other four coaches also volunteer their time to one class per week and cover for me when they can when I have a commitment that conflicts with one of the classes I coach.
With respect to finances, whilst I take care of all of the administration, including the bookkeeping, our board policy is to have two signors for each cheque, and if a cheque is made out to one of the approved signors, they cannot be a signor on that particular cheque.
Believe me or not. That’s your call. I can assure you that as a very small, volunteer-run non-profit, Underdogs doesn’t have the money to pay coaches or other staff, and it would be completely non-sensical to pay for a program such as this just to have the money go back into people’s pockets.
Here’s the thing, though, and I’ve said this before: taxpayers shouldn’t be funding the donations/contributions of their regional councillors. So, although I gave my raise back to a program for members of the community, that’s not something any of you should be paying for me to decide to do.
Laura Ip - Regional Councillor 