The topic of raises for directors was raised by a director at the Cambria Community Services District board meeting Thursday, Feb. 28, but any decision was put off, probably until when the annual budget is reviewed.

Directors currently receive $75 per meeting with a cap of $450 per month, down from $100 per meeting some years ago.

Director Amanda Rice said she was reluctant to suggest raising the board compensation back to $100 per meeting, with a maximum of six meetings a month, but being a board member is a job, albeit a volunteer one, she said, and it takes many hours a month to do it right.

Director Muril Clift, who was a member of the board  when the panel cut the fee by $25 per meeting in 2009, said he’d prefer to consider such a possibility during annual budget-setting that starts this month and is supposed to conclude by June.

Directors reduced the fee, he said, when “we were asking staff to reduce their income. The board at that time felt we should not ask staff to take hits that we weren’t willing to take.”

He acknowledged the $25 increase would be “a small amount of money,” even when multiplied by five directors, “and there’s no way, if a director is doing the job appropriately” that the fee compensates for the time spent, including reading reports, and “being stopped at the grocery store or on the street … Quite frankly, we’re probably working at slave-labor wages as it is.”