Analysis | Making sense of the city council's pay increases
For this article, the headline could just as easily be: Public officials give themselves massive pay raises; and frankly, such a statement wouldn’t be entirely off-base. On Monday, the Rochester City Council indeed voted to more than double their current salaries. Next year, members’ annual pay will go from $21,712 to $52,560. The council president will earn $60,444.
Any way you spin it, those increases are significant. And as a result, the backlash from the public has been swift. It has also been almost entirely predictable (“VOTE ‘EM ALL OUT!!”). Pay raises for politicians must be the only thing less popular than turkey leftovers five days past Thanksgiving.
But there is more nuance to this subject than what can be squeezed into the margins of a single headline. Further, while much of the debate has centered around the very subjective issue of whether specific councilors deserve the raise, that’s not really what was at stake Monday night.
The reality is that the long-term impact of these pay increases will be much greater than the sum of money going into any one person’s bank account.
Expectations for the positions will now be higher. Tolerance for incompetence will be lower. And, perhaps most consequentially, the pool of potential candidates who can pursue public office will be wider.
As Council Member Michael Wojcik stated, “We don’t necessarily need [the raises] ourselves. We have been able to do just fine without this. But we also have to look at our board and say the council — the positions of leadership within a community — should be open to the community. And right now the policies we have in place make it very difficult to attract young people, people of color, women; we haven’t had a renter on this council in I don’t know how long… and that’s a huge part of our community.”
Wojcik has been an easy target for critics of the pay increases. Not only was he the one to bring the proposal forward, but his propensity for controversy has at times put him at odds with the rest of the council.
On this issue, though, Wojcik was not alone. The council voted 6-1 in favor of adopting the staff recommendation to tie the salaries of public officials to the area median income. Going forward, the mayor’s salary will be set at 120 percent AMI (or $78,840 in 2020), the council president at 92 percent AMI, and council ward representatives at 80 percent AMI.
The equation means council members will make significantly more than their peers in other Greater Minnesota cities, though still less than those holding office in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
In other words, elected officials doing the work of the state’s third largest city will be compensated accordingly. That makes good sense.
It also means that salaries for public officials will be tied to the economic strength of the community. When the median income goes up, so too will their wages; and vise versa. (The AMI will be based on a single-person household using data from the federal government.)
Again, it’s hard to argue against that logic — especially considering the responsibilities that come with the job.
“We put in a lot of hours, we lose a lot of sleep,” said Ward 4’s Mark Bilderback, who is set to retire at the end of 2020 after more than a decade on the council. “This gray hair did not come in naturally. It came in because you go through a lot of stress and you wrestle with a lot of decisions.”
Now, it is true that some council members put in more time than others. As Rochester resident Barry Skolnick noted, “I have seen some council people who do a full-time job, but I have also seen some that definitely don’t.”
Skolnick, who attends nearly every council meeting, went on to suggest that it may not be prudent to pay a full-time salary to a person only willing to work part-time. “And so I just think before you actually reward salaries to these people, you would assure yourself what you are getting — why exactly are you raising the salaries and what is the public getting for it?”
The fact of the matter, though, is that the position of a council member can no longer be viewed as a few-hours-a-week gig. The council is now responsible for overseeing the largest public-private development project in state history. To be effective, members — not to mention the mayor — generally have to spend more than 40 hours a week attending meetings, serving on boards, and responding to concerns from constituents.
In these critical times, the question needs to be less about what are we getting now — and more about what we want in the future.
“I think when you look across the community at the type of people you want making a hundred million, 200 million, billion-dollar decisions for the community that are going to play out over a decade, the scale of the decision is so large; my preference is to make this job attractive so we get a competition for people to get into here,” said Councilor Nick Campion.
After all, the beauty of the democratic process is that we get to decide what the expectations are. No one is entitled to their seat. If we as a community are unhappy with the performance of our elected leaders, we have the ability to do something about it. And when that day comes — like in November when four seats will be on the ballot — hopefully there will be an even more robust and well-rounded group of candidates to choose from.
ALso on Monday night:
The council voted 4-3 use state aid to cover a $1.2 million funding gap in the North Broadway reconstruction project. The vote ensures work on the the project will begin in 2020. Some council members had suggested holding off on construction so the project could be reviewed further. The $19.2 million project is largely being funded through a mix of municipal state aid, state DMC money, and utility funds.
The council unanimously approved the 2020 budget. It includes a $79.5 million property levy, roughly a 6.5 percent increase over 2019. Major projects scheduled for next year include the airport runway reconstruction, along with phase one of DMC’s Heart of the City.
It was announced that Chris Petree is stepping down from his position as Public Works director after just a year on the job. His last day with the city will be Friday. Petree has accepted a job as Director of Rochester Operations at WSB, an engineering firm.
Sean Baker is a Rochester journalist and the founder of Med City Beat.
