The issue of the 2024 aldermanic salaries has been referred back to the Human Resources and Information Technology Committee for further discussion. The committee will be discussing and voting on an amendment offered by Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) during the 11/02/2022 Common Council meeting which would remove the annual parking pass benefit from the aldermanic salaries and replace it with an additional cash benefit of $480 which would bring the 2024 salary up to $7,230 but they would no longer have parking passes.
The current aldermanic salary is $6221.44 with a parking pass, and in April of 2023 that will go up to $6750 plus a parking pass. [So were one to ignore the free parking pass and look strictly at the amount of dollars on the checks the alderpersons receive, an additional $480 would be a 7.1% increase from 2023 to 2024.]
The Human Resources and Information Technology Committee will need to schedule a special session to take this up because their regular 11/09/2022 meeting has been cancelled to make room for the 2023 Budget Adoption. Any change needs to be approved by the Common Council before December 1, so there is a bit of a time crunch on this.
Here’s a transcript of the full Common Council discussion:
Back on 10/26/2022, the committee recommended that there be no salary increase for 2024. Different committee members cited different reasons for that including the city’s current financial and economic situation and the way the 2023 salary increase had been politicized. Although Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6), the chairperson of the HR and IT Committee was, in the abstract, in favor of a pay increase at some point in the future, she also voted with the rest of the committee to keep the salary the same for 2024.
During the 11/02/2022 Council meeting, Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12) tried to offer an amendment to move $480 from parking pass money to the aldermanic salary. He actually tried a couple different times to offer the amendment but the way he was stating it was ruled out of order because he was essentially stating it int the way one would make a budget amendment but the budget was not the item under consideration or what had appeared on the agenda. [As a side note, this was something of a similar issue to what Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) ran into when he tried to amend the Add On Water Main Replacement Project List.]
Alderperson Meltzer eventually stepped in and reformulated the amendment in a way that was acceptable saying, “I want to propose an amendment that instead of dividing the alderperson salary and benefits among the salary and parking pass, we roll it all together, so that in the future when this—if approved, when this new budget goes into effect, instead of having parking passes, that amount of money is included in part of the in the salary.”
At that point, Alderperson Doran requested that the item be referred back to the Human Resources and Information Technology Committee for further discussion, “Because we’re absolutely doing committee work here. And this is a pretty significant change.”
The refer back was objected to, and concerns about the timing were raised because any salary increase needed to be approved by the Council before December 1, but due to the 2023 budget adoption process and Thanksgiving, the Human Resources and Information Technology Committee probably wasn’t going to meet again this month. However, Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) noted and confirmed with Mayor Woodford that a committee chairperson could call a meeting anytime as long as it did not conflict with other meetings, so calling a special meeting do deal with this issue would be possible.
Alderperson Wolff opposed referring the item back to committee and wanted to discuss it and vote on in that night during the Common Council meeting telling his colleagues, “In past discussions, this item has come up and we didn’t refer back to committee. So, I think it would be weird to do it now, and I would ask you to support the objection.”
Ultimately only Alderpersons Meltzer, Brad Firkus (District 3), Joss Thyssen (District 8 ), and Wolff voted against referring the item back, so the item was successfully sent back to the committee to work on further. The date and time of that meeting will be forthcoming.
[Frankly, I think it would have been inappropriate if the Council had voted on the amendment that night and not referred it back to committee. One of the reasons items get discussed and voted on in committee before they are brought to the Council is so that the public has an opportunity to see what is under consideration and provide feedback. The Council amending the salary recommendation from no increase to what could be interpreted as a 7% increase is absolutely something that should be done in a manner that allows for public feedback.
I understand that alderpersons have jobs and lives outside of their city government work, but given the well-known December 1st deadline for any salary changes, this really seems like a situation in which, rather than waiting until the Common Council meeting to recommend major changes, it would have been more appropriate to show up at the committee meeting in which the item was originally discussed and provide feedback and offer potential amendments at that time. Waiting until the last minute and then objecting to the refer-back because “it would be weird” does not seem like a particularly organized way to deal with this.
Also, I realize that, in theory, this proposed change would not amount to any increase in salary, but I also recognize that the change would result in intangible money in a budget spreadsheet being replaced with cold hard cash. The city puts a $480 price-tag on an annual parking pass, but I question whether it actually costs the city $480 per alderperson to let them have free parking. It will, however, cost the city $480 per alderperson to remove the parking benefit and replace it with the monetary value of that parking pass. It will be real money the alderpersons receive; not the spreadsheet money they currently get.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=997432&GUID=1675D6C6-136E-4C49-B5DA-C665A7FBF628
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