The Common Council met 11/15/2023. The meeting was on the shorter side at only 30 minutes, about half of it was taken up with a reconsideration of Alderperson salaries for the 2025 aldermanic term. The Council ended up voting 13-0 to approve no increase or changes to the aldermanic salary for the 2025 term.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
This item had been extensively discussed at the 11/01/2023 Common Council meeting. At that meeting, the item was amended a number of times. The final amendment would have removed the parking pass each alderperson received (valued at $40 a month) and then increased the overall salary by $20 per month ($240 annually) for a total annual salary of $7,250 with no parking pass. The Council voted 7-6 to approve this change; however, by state law changes in salaries must be approved by a ¾ vote of the body, which in this case would have required 12 affirmative votes.
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) asked for the item to be reconsidered at the 11/15/2023 Council meeting.
After it was opened up again, Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) made the same motion that had passed at the 11/01/2023 Common Council meeting to remove the parking pass and increase the overall salary by $20 a month ($240 for the year) for a total of $7,250. He believed this was a fair compromise to his initial amendment made at the previous meeting which was to remove the parking pass and increase the salary by $12 a month and would also allow alderpersons to pay for alternative transportation such as buses and Bird Scooters. This time, the amendment was voted down by a vote of 4-9.
Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3) asked his fellow alderpersons to look at the situation and consider whether there was a way to get to 12 votes to change the pay. If they believed there was, then he was willing to have the conversation for as long as was necessary, but “If you do not believe there is a way for us to get to that tonight, let’s just stop wasting everyone’s time in this room, please.”
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) was not opposed to keeping the salary and parking pass unchanged for the 2025 term; however, she thought that, going forward, the alderperson salary needed to be judged with more data. She provided the Council with a packet of information comparing alderperson salaries in Appleton to those in other city’s and specifically focused on the aldermanic salaries in Waukesha and Racine because those cities were each very similar in size to Appleton.
She also compared the historic salaries for Appleton’s alderpersons with the inflation rate and determined that based on an average 2.5% inflation rate, the 2001 salary of $5,636 would be $9,791 in 2023, and based on an average inflation rate of 2.82% the 2013 (the year the parking pass was added) salary of $5,805 would be worth $7,666 in 2023. She stated, “I’m fine with it as is, but I think that is worth considering next year looking at getting us back to being in line, including the training budget that we upped this last budget, which would be about a difference of 2.5%. So, at this time, I’m okay with leaving everything as is but I just wanted everyone to have this information so that we’re ready to have a real discussion at committee next year.”
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) appreciated the information Alderperson Van Zeeland had put together, and said, “[T]he number that’s sticks out to me is that our salary from 2001 to today is you know, lagging by maybe as much as a third from where it should be, you know. If we were at our same pay rate adjusted for inflation, we’d be at $9,791 today so that’s kind of a stunning number to think about. And all these arguments we have about trying to catch up I think are worthwhile so you know let’s have this discussion a little bit more robust the next time we go through this process and get ourselves a little bit closer to where everybody else is.
The Council ended up voting 13-0 to approve no changes to the aldermanic salary for the 2025 term.
[My initial reaction is that I’m not convinced by the inflation argument. I don’t think it makes sense to compare the current aldermanic salary with the salary in 2013 or 2001 and conclude that alderpersons have gotten a pay cut. Most of the currently serving alderpersons weren’t even on the Council in 2013 and 2001.
Beyond that, there’s no rule that says the salary must keep up with inflation. Common Council members have, presumably, been aware of the inflation rate but have still historically chosen not to increase the alderperson salary very often. Now, maybe these current Council members will not choose to follow that precedent going forward (which would be their prerogative), but I think doing some kind of large jump in salary now to bring it in line with where it would be if past Councils had been gradually increasing the salary for the last 20 years doesn’t really make sense. That would imply that they were correcting some sort of historic wrong, but it wasn’t a wrong. Rather it was a deliberate choice by past Councils to not increase the salary.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1120381&GUID=A16B800C-AC19-4D7B-B553-47E728A5D013
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