Human Resources And Information Technology Committee Recommends No 2024 Salary Increase For Common Council Members

The Human Resources and Information Technology Committee met 10/26/2022. One of the items they took up was a request to approve aldermanic salaries for 2024. (As a note, salary changes are voted for 1 ½ years ahead of time because currently service alderpersons are not allowed to vote on their own salaries. The only way to make changes for the Common Council as a whole is to vote on changes that will only be effective following two election cycles in the future.)

The committee ended up voting 4-0 to recommend making no changes to the current aldermanic salary rate.

There have been a lot of technical difficulties with the videos that have been posted this week. I have not inquired as to the reason, but my assumption has been that that is related to the ongoing renovations at City Hall. As a result, the video of the meeting has been very difficult to watch. It’s glitchy. It freezes up. And sometimes it fails completely due to network issues.

From what I was able to gather based on the parts of the video I was able to view, Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) made a motion to approve the salary as-is with no increase. She cited the city’s current financial and economic situation.

Alderperson Chris Croatt (District 14) seemed to be opposed to aldermanic pay increases in principal and expressed disagreement with the 8.5% aldermanic salary increase for April of 2023 that the Council had approved in September of 2021 and was in favor of no increase for 2024.

It sounded like Alderperson Maiyoua Thao (District 7) was in favor of the pay raise that city employees were going to receive and thought that was more important that alderpersons getting a salary increase. She agreed that no increase in aldermanic pay was appropriate.

Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) agreed to vote in favor of no salary increase given the current circumstances. She did, however, feel that, in the abstract or at some point in the future, a salary increase would be warranted because she felt that the current salary level prevented some people from running for office. She mentioned not having enough money to pay for childcare in order to attend meetings as an example of the hardship caused by low pay.

On her aldermanic blog she laid out her thoughts more completely than was captured by the glitchy meeting video, writing, “The first item on the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting relates to alderperson salaries. This has become extremely politicized and the fodder for negative campaign ads run against an alder and member of the committee who is running for State Senate. The reality is that the 8.5% raise that the council voted for last year amounts to about $10 per week and people like my colleague who owns her own business probably lose money by serving on the Common Council because it takes time away from their primary job. There is no other compensation or expense allowance other than the parking passes, so any expenses for mailing, etc. are paid for my council members. We are required to take up this item every year, but any action doesn’t take effect until the second year after the vote because we cannot vote on the salary for the current term. The raise voted on in 2021 actually takes effect in 2023, and any action taken this week will take effect I 2024. I plan to propose a small increase, but I expect that what will go to the full council is a recommendation for no increase for 2024.”

But, during the meeting itself, she did not end up proposing a small increase and instead voted in support of no increase for 2024.

View full meeting details and the video such as it is here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1007226&GUID=FB747BAD-065F-46C2-8A7E-A0A8A7FBCE8D