Since 2017 a total of over $15,000 in salary overpayments have made to members of the Appleton Common Council. This is the result of aldermanic salaries having been incorrectly increased 4 times either when the Common Council had not approved the increase at all or when less than the statutorily required 3/4th of the Council had voted in favor of a salary increase.
Wisconsin State Statute 62.09(6)(a) states “Salaries shall be paid the mayor or alderpersons only when ordered by a vote of three-fourths of all the members of the council.”
Appleton’s Common Council has 15 members; therefore, it takes 12 affirmative votes to approve salary changes. This is why the salary increase that had been initially “approved” on 11/01/2023 by a vote of 7-6 was not able to be implemented.
Although the Council was alerted to the 3/4 vote requirement after the 2023 vote and that increase was not implemented, there have been 3 other salary changes since 2017 that have been implemented even though they were not approved by 12 alderpersons. There was also one instance in which the aldermanic salary was increased even though the Common Council had not approved an increase at all.
- The 2017 aldermanic salary was increased to $5980 even though the Common Council expressly voted on 11/18/2015 to not increase the salary and instead keep it at $5,921.
- The 2018 aldermanic salary was increased to $6,129.50 by a vote of 9-4 on 10/19/2016.
- The 2019 aldermanic salary (also of $6,129.50) was approved by a vote of 9-5 on 10/18/2017.
- The 2023 aldermanic salary of $6,750 was approved by a vote of 10-3 on 09/15/2021.
How did these increases happen?
In 2015, the Human Resources and Information Technology Committee had recommended a 1% increase for the 2017 aldermanic salary. When the Common Council took it up, they ended up amending it to be a 0% increase, and the amended version which kept the 2017 salary at $5,921 was the item that passed; I confirmed with Human Resources Director Jay Ratchman that the salary paid to alderpersons in 2017 was the $5,980 that had been recommended by the committee but not approved by the Council.
The mistake would have happened under the previous Human Resources Director, and given the time that has passed I don’t know if the city will be able to determine what happened.
Regarding the salary increases in 2018, 2019, and 2023, City Attorney Christopher Behrens confirmed that approval by 3/4 of the Council was required to increase the salary and then provided background on why the increases had been implemented even though the votes fell short of that ¾ threshold. He stated:
“I reviewed [section 62.09(6)] in more detail last year while researching a different matter. What was confusing were several League of Municipalities opinions, with citations, indicating that the ¾ vote was the initial vote to determine if a salary would be paid, then subsequent votes (for increases) only required a simple majority. League Opinions as recently as November of 2021 stated this requirement (Salaries #426 R-2). These opinions referenced 62.09(6)(b), supporting the majority vote requirement for subsequent salary changes; however, last year while reviewing my office copy of the statutes, I found 62.09(6)(b) wasn’t there. While I don’t know the legislative history behind it, subsection (b) was repealed back in 2010 (2009 WI Act 173). The three examples you mentioned going back to 2015 should have applied the ¾ vote requirement instead of the previous long-standing simple majority requirement.”
I asked him why the 2023 increase was still in effect even though it hadn’t been approved by 3/4 of the Council, and he pointed out that the $6750 had been approved by the Common Council on 11/16/2022 by a vote of 13-0.
Of note, in 2022, the Council was under the impression that they were voting for no increase to the salary and, in fact, did not even separate it out for an individual vote.
Likewise, the 13-0 vote in 2018 that finally legitimized the $6,129.50 aldermanic salary that had been passed by less than 3/4 of the Council the two previous years, was also taken without separating the item out for an individual vote and was done by a Council that believed it was approving no change to the aldermanic salary.
Since 2017, $15,068.40 of taxpayer dollars have been incorrectly spent on aldermanic salaries that either were not approved at all or were not approved by the necessary number of votes.
Individual alderpersons have received overpayments ranging from $59 to $1004.56 depending on which years they served on the Council.
The 2026 aldermanic salary should be coming up for discussion and a vote in the next month or so. It will be interesting to see how or if these past overpayments will impact that discussion.
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