Thank you to Councillor Garry Peltzer-Dunn and Unison's Steve Foster (Letters, September 5) for sharing my concern about the rise in councillors' allowances. Both appear to want to resist the drift towards professional, full-time councillors with more council staff being paid overtime for sitting in more meetings.
Why, then, do both back the No campaign's proposals for the introduction of more committee meetings as the answer to Brighton and Hove's problems?
More meetings will mean more overtime payments for council staff and will inevitably lead to councillors wishing to be paid as full-time professionals - the very thing Steve Foster wishes to avoid.
As a Unison member, I would prefer my union officials to think about the issues more carefully. Specifically, which front-line council services will be cut to allow councillors to sit around in more meetings?
You don't have to be a genius at maths to work out it would cost less to pay for a mayor than for dozens of councillors plus staff to service the committees. But, as I said before, whoever heard of turkeys voting for Christmas?
-Sharon Rose, Dean Gardens, Portslade
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