Collinsville, Illinois | Collinsville city facebook https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=562597412577634&set=a.229000829270629&__tn__=%2CO*F
Collinsville, Illinois | Collinsville city facebook https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=562597412577634&set=a.229000829270629&__tn__=%2CO*F
Collinsville city leaders broached the topic of increasing compensation for future sets of elected officials, like the mayor and council members, at a recent city council meeting.
“I think for the future of our community and our hard-working people on the council, they deserve adequate compensation,” Mayor John Miller said during the March 14 meeting. “We spend a lot more time on city issues out of council than we do here in the council.”
Miller introduced the concept before turning it over to city manager Mitch Bair, explaining that the city had not taken a look at the compensation rates for elected officials since before they went to a city manager form of government. This means that pay rates for council members and the mayor have not been changed in over 32 years.
When the pay rates were set in 1991, city leaders chose $3,600 for the mayor, which would be $8,000 today if adjusted for inflation, and $3,000 for council members, which would be just under $6,700 today.
All council members said they felt a certain level of awkwardness discussing the compensation rates for their current positions, although they all agreed that an adjustment is overdue.
The council chose to adopt a policy that would activate the changes they chose after the next election, thereby not affecting the compensation for any of the current council members or mayor, who is coming up on the end of his time in city government. This policy would take effect after the 2025 election, with a review of the proposed changes six months beforehand to ensure that it was still the right decision.
The council discussed numbers, agreeing that the proposed $6,000 for the council members felt like the right amount, but debating the wage for the mayor. The proposed $10,000 compensation falls in the middle of what other communities pay. Some council members felt they should go higher with the amount of work the mayor does, and others thought lower so that it wouldn’t be so drastic of a jump. Those who wanted a lesser compensation won the day, as they approved increasing the mayoral figure to $8,000.
They also chose to set up a review for the compensation amounts every four years, a change from the two-year review period originally proposed.
A final vote on the matter will come up at the end of this month.
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