Common Council Fails To Make Changes To Aldermanic Salary For 2025 Term – Alderperson Denise Fenton Indicates She Will Ask To Reconsider Item At 11/08/2023 Council Meeting

The Common Council met 11/01/2023. Almost an hour of the meeting was spent discussing and voting on the aldermanic salary for the 2025 term.

Due to state statute, the Council has to set compensation for alderpersons prior to December 1^st, 2 years ahead of time. In 2021, Council voted to increase the 2023 salary by roughly $500 to $6,750. In 2022, the Council voted against any increase.

Along with the salary, alderpersons receive a monthly parking pass valued at $40 per month or $480 a year that allows them to park downtown for free. Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) has attempted to eliminate this benefit, most notably introducing a resolution in 2022 that, if passed, would have eliminated the parking pass benefit. The resolution, however, was voted down.

This year, the Human Resources and Information Technology Committee voted to recommend no increase to the aldermanic salary for 2025 and no change to the parking pass benefit.

When the item came before the Common Council, it went through a series of amendments.

• Alderperson Doran moved to remove the parking pass benefit and, to make up for the loss of the parking pass, increase the salary by $12 a month ($144 a year) for a total of $6,894.
• Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3) moved to remove the parking pass benefit and increase the salary by $20 a month ($240 a year) for a total of $6990.
• Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) moved to remove the parking pass benefit and increase the salary by $500 for the year for a total of $7,490.
• Alderperson Doran moved to reduce the previously approved $500 increase by $20 per month ($240 annually) for a total annual salary of $7,250.

All of these different amendments were approved by various majorities of the Council, and the final amendment that would have removed the parking pass benefit and increased the 2025 aldermanic salary to $7,250 was “approved” by the Council by a vote of 7-6.

I put “approved” in quotes, because, after the fact, it was determined that Wisconsin State Statute 62.09(6)(a), requires changes to aldermanic salaries to receive an affirmative vote of ¾ of the members of the Council. Because it only received a simple majority, the item did not actually pass. Alderpersons Israel Del Toro (District 4) and Alex Schultz (District 9) had to leave the meeting early, but even if they had been able to stay and even if they had cast affirmative votes, the final vote would have only been 9-6, but 10 12 aye votes would have been required to get over the ¾ hurdle.

Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) has indicated on her Facebook page that she plans to ask for the item to be reconsidered at the 11/08/2023 Common Council meeting. She writes, “I’ve long been on record that, while I fully understand that serving on the Common Council is not a full-time job, keeping the pay very low keeps people who are self-employed and have to forego income to attend meetings, or parents with small children who have to pay for childcare to attend meetings, from being able to serve, making the council unrepresentative of the city as a whole. I will support either no increase or a small increase in council pay for the 2025 term AND keeping the option of a parking pass.”

I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download.

The discussion went on for an hour, but I don’t know that a play-by-pay recap is necessary.

The arguments in favor of removing the parking pass are basically that the parking pass is a perk and that it would actually cost less than $40 a month for an alderperson to park downtown for job related business, particularly because not all meetings took place during times when meters had to be plugged. It would be more responsible to taxpayers to simply increase the salary by a slight amount ($12 or $20 a month) and have alderpersons pay out of their own pocket for parking. This change would also open up opportunities for alderpersons to utilize public transportation, which the current parking pass does not allow them to do.

The arguments in favor of keeping the parking pass was that alderpersons should not have to pay extra money in order to carry out their job responsibilities, and a parking pass was a simple and convenient way for alderpersons to be able to attend meetings and not have to run out and plug the meter.

Arguments in favor of not increasing the aldermanic salary were that they had already received an 8% increase earlier this year and the Appleton aldermanic salary was near the top range for area aldermanic salaries.

Arguments in favor of increasing the aldermanic salary were that alderpersons are not compensated at a level commiserate with the amount of work they put in and that an increase (on top of the 8% increase that went into effect earlier this year) is necessary to keep up with inflation. Right now, the job pays so little that it’s a barrier for some people to seek office, such as some lower income and self-employed individuals, single parents, and people with small children.

[Politicians can always come up with altruistic justification for raising the salary of the office they expect to continue to run for and hold. We see that on a national level. I would assume it holds true at the local level as well.

And, while it certainly is a drawback that alderpersons in a city of 75,000 people don’t have the opportunity to use their positions to engage in insider trading like basically all members of Congress do, I suspect that there would be people who would be willing to run for these positions even if the pay was $0 because, unstated in this entire discussion, is the reality that merely being an alderperson and having the authority to direct the course of the city is a major perk in and of itself and probably the main reason why most people run for office.]

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1120380&GUID=59C8392B-B7FA-46B9-B8E4-0F1495154936