During the last City Council re-election cycle, I floated... very quietly... my opinion that our City Council is underpaid. The only positive feedback I recieved on my 'float' came from some of those who sat on the Council at the time... and, of course, with a single exception, continue to sit there.
While I certainly adhere to the belief that citizens should not seek elected office for the money, I also believe that, once elected, our representatives should spend a lot of time doing what they were elected to do and be fairly compensated for the effort. By all accounts the amount of time spent attending to governance on the part our Council is considerable and on the increase.
Greensboro's stipend for our City Council and Mayor were codified in 1978 when we adopted the practice of electing district representatives. (I would link to the passage in our City Code to show this, but many parts of the City's website have been down for a few days.) Since then we have been paying our Council members $9,500 per year, and our Mayor gets a whopping $12,500 annually. A pitance if you compare that to our peer cities (some links are dead from those 08/03 posts).
What got me started on this was The Inside Scoop's post today about compensation changes for City workers. The Scoop posted a memo (pdf file) from City Manager Ed Kitchen that suggests, among many other things, that the taxpayers ought to start providing our City Council with health insurance, but of course the Council will have to approve this benefit for themselves, and I hope they do. From the memo...
"The total cost to the City of offering this coverage, should all members of Council participate, would be approximately $37,000 for 12 months. The fact that this is common practice now (in other jurisdictions), couple with the increasing demands on council and our council salaries being below average, all lead me to conclude that this change is fully justified."
At $9,500 per year, it's a wonder anyone would commit to the time it should take to be an effective Council member. At $12,500 annually, our Mayor makes just $8.00 per hour if he spends 30 hours a week doing the job we elected him for... and I am confident that happens more weeks than it does not. It's just pitiful and it needs to change.
I think offering our City Council health insurance coverage is a good start toward bringing Greensboro closer to par with what other cities our size pay their elected officials. But to get more people interested in running for office, we will have to sweeten the deal even more because truth is, as it is now, few citizens even contemplate running for office because they can ill-afford to serve.
The slave wages of elected office certainly weighs on my decision on whether or not to run for City Council again, I know it shouldn't... but the reality is... bills need paying.
10:59:16 PM 
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