In anticipation of a proposal at tonight’s 7 o’clock City Council meeting to end healthcare benefits when Council members leave office, Mayor Mehaul O’Leary made a stunning corresponding proposal this afternoon:
“I would think we should make four times as much as we do now. We are worth $500 a week,” he said.
“Why, I pay my doorman (at Joxer Daly’s Irish Pub) $20 an hour, and I think I am worth more than my doorman.”
Having just emerged from a meeting in which he received one of four prized endorsements from the Culver City Employees Assn., the high-spirited mayor was feeling cheerier than usual.
Mayor O’Leary said that the present modest salary of each Councilman is an estimated “$500 a month, if you include the stipend from the Redevelopment Agency, which no longer is in business.”
As for the proposal for ending healthcare benefits at the point of departure, Mayor O’Leary said that while he wants to hear what his colleagues say tonight, he probably will give an affirmative response and likely concur with his colleague Councilman Andy Weissman who will raise the subject.
Reflecting further, the mayor said he would gladly surrender his benefits immediately in exchange for the salary bump that he just suggested.
