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Commissioners revisit past salary recommendations and discuss frameworks for future pay proposals
Summary
Commission members reviewed historical salary proposals dating back to 2016, debated pegging council pay to median income versus cost-of-living adjustments, and agreed to solicit elected-official input and circulate frameworks in advance.
Commission members reviewed the commission’s recent history on salary recommendations, discussed competing approaches for future proposals and agreed on next steps for gathering information from elected officials.
Committee member S2 presented materials tracing past proposals and debates from 2016 through 2024, including a prior staff draft that would have pegged council-member pay to local median income with the council president paid at a multiplier above regular council members. S2 said prior deliberations produced a compromise that resulted in 3% figures under time pressure. "We thought we were going in one direction and then at the last minute, we didn't," S2 said, describing how some members felt blindsided by the prior outcome.
Committee member S4 disputed characterization of prior approvals and said the previous cycle did not formally approve any salary increases. "There was no salary increase that was ever approved, period," S4 said; members agreed staff should check archived minutes and recordings to reconcile different recollections.
Commissioners discussed two analytic approaches for future recommendations: using the cost-of-living/COLA indexes to catch up salaries over time, or pegging compensation to a local median income benchmark with a multiplier for leadership positions. Some members favored conceptual frameworks (non-numeric) to guide deliberations before producing specific salary numbers; others said initial numeric proposals could be circulated in advance to speed the process.
For next steps, the commission directed staff to solicit information from elected officials on duties and responsibilities and asked the city’s IT/staff (S6) to assign official city email addresses to commissioners to centralize distribution of public documents. Commissioners agreed that any initial salary frameworks or proposals should be distributed to the commission in advance of the next meeting to allow more rapid deliberation toward a final recommendation.
