The Human Resources and Information Technology Committee met 08/27/2025. One of the items they took up was a request to set the aldermanic salary for the 2027-2028 Council year. The rules regarding setting the salary are slightly different than for other items. A recommendation from the committee required affirmative votes by a majority of the committee members total—not merely a majority of the committee members present at the meeting. Additionally, approval of a salary change requires approval by 3/4 of the city’s 15 alderpersons.
Only 3 of the committee’s 5 members were in attendance at the meeting which meant all three of them would have needed to agree to a motion in order to move the item on to the Common Council. They could not reach an agreement so, therefore, voted to hold the item until the 09/10/2025 committee meeting at which point, hopefully, all the committee members will be present and a motion will be able to get 3 affirmative votes in order to move the item on to the Common Council.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
The item was put on the agenda by the Human Resources Department, and Human Resources Director Jay Ratchman also provided information on the salaries since 2014 as well as salaries for other area municipalities. But staff made no recommendation as to what the salary ought to be because that was fully the purview of the alderpersons. The current salary for Appleton alderpersons is $6750 where it has been since 2021.
Elected officials are not allowed to vote on their own salaries and are only allowed to vote on the salaries for future election terms. The committee and Council could vote to change the salary for the 2026-2027 aldermanic term but that would mean only half of the Common Council would see their pay increased while the half of the Council whose terms don’t end until 2027 would remain at the current aldermanic salary. The only way to set an increase that would apply to the entire Council would be to change the salary for the 2027 aldermanic term. The practice of Appleton’s Council members has been to set salaries two years in advance so that there is only one salary for all council members.
Alderperson Chris Croatt (District 14) was not a member of the committee, but he did speak. He asked the committee to stay consistent with past practice and set the salary for two-years out so the salary remained the same for all Council members. He said he was not a fan of large increases to aldermanic salaries even though he understood the argument that increasing the pay might attract candidates. He preferred to keep the salary where it was or match the percentage increase that city employees received in the annual budget.
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) made a motion to keep the salary at $6750 for the 2027 aldermanic term. This was seconded by Alderperson Adrian Stancil-Martin (District 11). However, when they voted, Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12) voted against that motion.
They needed 3 affirmative votes in order to get any recommendation regarding aldermanic pay out of the committee and before the Council, so the committee ended up voting 3-0 to hold the item until the 09/10/2025 committee meeting at which point the 2 other committee members would hopefully be present and the full committee could take the item up again.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1332090&GUID=63D84758-72FE-4FF3-95CE-BAFB1FCE417
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