The Common Council met 11/09/2022 in a special session to adopt the 2023 Executive Budget. The Council ended up approving the 2023 budget with no amendments by a 14-0 vote. Although no amendments were approved, four amendments were made and deliberated on. The first amendment that was taken up (and the focus of this post) was proposed by Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) and was to “Add $6,480 to Public Works Concrete Reconstruction Delete $6,480 of Council Parking Permits.” The amendment ended up failing 12-2 with Alderpersons Doran and Shari Hartzheim (District 13) casting the two votes in favor of it.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the full discussion for your downloading pleasure.
I think this discussion holds some relevance to the discussion that will be taking place in the upcoming special meeting of the Human Resources and Information Technology Committee meeting in which they will be discussing and voting on the amendment to, as of April of 2024, remove the parking pass benefit for alderpersons and replace it with $480.
First off, strictly looking at the text of the amendment, I took it to be essentially removing the parking pass benefit from the aldermanic salary package, but, apparently, it wouldn’t have actually done that. Alderperson Doran told the Council that he was “trying to find a happy medium that allows for our colleagues who wish to use parking permit at the expense of tax dollars to still be able to do that. But in a what I think is a more manageable way, given that, at least in this this particular year half of the Council is already not using a parking permit to begin with.”
The amendment reduced the parking pass budget down to what was the cost of one parking permit, but then Council members would be able to seek reimbursement through city staff on possibly a monthly basis. The reimbursement would be at the parking meter rate rather than the parking ramp rate because the parking meters were closer and more convenient for the alderpersons than the parking ramp anyway.
Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3) confirmed with staff that utilizing a reimbursement process would increase the administrative work of city staff, but, later in the meeting, Director of Public Works Danielle Block could not give an estimate of how much that administrative work would cost.
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) did not support the amendment, saying, “I don’t think anybody is happy about this state of our budget right now, you know that we are in a position where we have a lot of debt to pay off from projects that none of us had really anything to do with. But doing this job means making really hard decisions, and I just find this in particular and the next item to be performative. I feel like it’s trying to make people believe that we are saving them money when nothing is really going to make a dent in any of our concrete projects. It’s, it just feels like political theater, and trying to fool our citizens or stir up controversy where there isn’t any.”
Alderperson Hartzheim supported the amendment and said, “It seems like small nickels, dimes, but shouldn’t we save $1,000 in ten places so that we can do something more for the city and the citizens? Shouldn’t we save $1,000 in a hundred places so that we can do something for the citizens of this city?”
Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) asked if the Council could even vote on this because it seemed like the sitting alderpersons would be voting on their own salary and benefits [which is not something they are legally allowed to do.]
Attorney Christopher Behrens responded that parking permits were not a part of the salary but were instead a non-taxable benefit. “I think where maybe some confusion lies goes back to our last meeting, where there was some discussion but no action on that about actually taking those funds and tacking those on to the salary itself. That would be then essentially a salary discussion where you have to take that into consideration. But just making the passes available as a benefit for those who want to exercise that benefit is not part of the salary discussion.”
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) had turned in his parking pass because he didn’t find it necessary for him, but he liked their current system of allowing individual alderpersons to decide for themselves if they needed a parking pass. “I think forcing this on the body as a whole kind of takes away from our ability to do our job effectively, in a small way.”
Alderperson Doran disagreed that they were taking anything away. “This isn’t taking away something we have. This is just replacing it with a different opportunity that still provides for us to be reimbursed for our parking. So, anyone who still wants to take advantage of the benefit can, but I think it’s at a more effective rate and cost to the taxpayers from that standpoint. And I think that’s exactly what we’re here for.”
Alderperson Meltzer made a comment [that I thought was very relevant to the upcoming discussion about removing the parking pass benefit and replacing it with an increase to the dollar amount of the aldermanic salary]. “I feel that when we set this money in the budget, that doesn’t mean we are spending $6,480 on parking passes, because people can opt out of their parking passes. I think when we set aside a certain number in the budget, we are making sure that there is enough to accommodate in the case–let’s say something really weird happens this winter, and everybody needs to use their cars to avoid a terrible black ice storm or something. What if our culture changes and things like that? I think that, you know, we don’t know what situation newly elected alders are going to be in. If we change this right now, then going forward forever after, the benefit of a parking pass for someone who needs it isn’t going to be there. So, I think that there’s something that’s very responsible and very prudent for keeping this amount of money here, and if this money isn’t being spent internally when someone else, another, when another department needs $1,000 or $500, here and there, they handle that administratively. So, there’s no loss or harm done to the community or the finance department at all for this money to be budgeted this way, and then alders to opt out of their parking passes”
The Council ended up voting 12-2 to deny the amendment.
[It seemed a little weird to hear the alderperson who just recently put forth a proposal to eliminate parking passes and replace them with a salary increase extoling the value of the aldermanic parking pass benefit and expressing concern at the possibility of this benefit not being available to alderpersons in the future.
It’s also important to note that, per this discussion, many of the alderpersons aren’t even using a parking pass and, when they turn their parking passes in, that money goes back to the city and can be redirected toward other things. Were that parking pass benefit to be replaced with a salary increase, 100% of the money would be leaving the city and going toward alderpersons and there would not even be the possibility that any of it would be left over to be redirected toward other things.
Also of note, per Attorney Behrens, the parking pass isn’t even considered salary. So, if the Council goes ahead and raises the 2024 salary by $480, that will be a 7.1% increase over the 2023 salary, which in turn was itself increased 8.5% over the 2022 salary. Both of those increases are markedly more than the 5% increase city staffers will be receiving in 2023 or the 2.5% increase they received this year.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1001699&GUID=79453C2A-9A80-4E2E-9871-B422793269CD
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