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12/06/2007: "Salary Commission Decides: Keep It As Is"

(SJC Citizens Salary Commission meets in Whidbey Island Bank Community Room)

The San Juan County Citizens’ Salary Commission (CSC) voted on Wednesday to not make any changes to the base pay of the elected officials in San Juan County. The did vote to grant a cost of living increase of 3.0%.

Neither of the votes were unanimous. The dissenting vote was from member Ryan Drum, who opposed both motions.

Former Freehold Charles Bodenstab took advantage of a public access period to comment on the difficulty that three of the county council members have in accepting their loss of administrative powers. Bodenstab said that when council members continue to get involved in administrative matters, and “when they get into administrative areas, they are breaking the law. Think what they are doing, they are saying we are having to do this (involved in administration), which is not true, and ‘We want you to reimburse us’ for having broken the law.”

Bodenstab said the Council needs to get out of administration; and “so it is critical to maintain the salary level where it is in order to get the message across that this is a part time job.”

In voting against the “cost of living” increase, Drum said that with respect to the increase made last year for the county council, “I think 2.5% is excessive, but that is what was done for this year.. I think behavior should adjust, rather than cost of living.”



Michael Soltman said he felt it was their job to “look at information, and assign a salary, and that’s it, we are not responsible for balancing the budget of the County, or anything else except for making the best assessment that we can, based on a job description, and other factors we consider, to assign what we believe to be a fair salary.”

The rest of the commission agreed with Soltman statement that “I think we did a good” -in 2006 when the Commission set the current salaries; and Soltman in turn agreed with SJC Auditor Milene Henley’s comments to the commission that the County is in a time of transition from a county commissioner administration, to a county manager administration.

Soltman said “it does not make sense at this time to change anything”, but then he rhetorically asked “under what conditions would we every make a change; if one was requested?”

Soltman said that for him, “it would be inappropriate for us to make some judgment at all, outside of some formal action” that indicated a change in the role of the council that would warrant a request to the Salary Commission to “make some kind of a salary judgment”, but absent a consensus of some change in the council job description, he said “I feel very strongly we should stick with what we got, and let this thing ride out through the transition until there is some compelling reason to make any changes at all”.

Motion was made to not change the base pay. In the general discussion prior to the vote, the majority agreed that unless, and until, the council job description is changed, the current salary schedule would remain as is.

The one exception to keeping the same pay, came from Ryan Drum, who stated “I would be in favor of reducing the pay…and we should encourage heroic behavior by our council members.”

The next meeting of the CSC will be on May 7th, when they will conduct a review of past work, conduct an orientation for new members, and elect officers. The next required working meeting will be next year, December 3rd at 11:30 a.m.; place to be announced.