Bloomington council debates values-based plan to raise 2025 elected-official salaries; second reading set for Dec. 11

The Bloomington Common Council on Dec. 10 spent more than two hours debating Ordinance 2024-26, a committee-drafted proposal to reset 2025 salaries for the city’s elected officials.

An ad hoc salary committee presented a values-based framework it developed with a Crowe consultant, listing five guiding principles—accessibility of office, equitable pay, quality community service, informed decisions and a transparent documented process—and described a method using an anonymous heat map to rate possible salary bases. "We set out to determine what elected officials should be paid," said Council Member Stosberg, who chaired the committee’s presentation, adding that the group had not looked at numbers until late in the process.

The committee’s recommendation presented dollar figures the committee said flowed from that framework: a mayoral salary at the midpoint of the city’s highest civil pay grade (listed at $151,410 for 2025), a city clerk salary near the midpoint of senior department-head pay (listed at $129,780), and a council member salary of $45,423 (the committee described this as a substantial increase from current pay). "We were trying to correct for inequitable pay,"…