02/23/2006: "Part Time Commissioners, Part Time Pay"

by Greg Hertel

The County Council has finally gotten around to thinking about the new pay schedule for the restructured Council and high time too! Candidates will be filing for 3 new positions plus the expiring term of the District 3 (Lopez/Shaw) in late July. Some are already considering a campaign and they have a right to know under what financial conditions they will be elected under. The Freeholders struggled with this and considered some models but ultimately we ran out of time and left it to a citizen committee to determine.

Some of the goals we were trying to achieve were:

1) Make any changes revenue neutral with regard to current expenses. In other words, the cost for the 6 council members plus administrator should not exceed current costs for three full time commissioners and their staff.

2) Pay for the council members should encourage citizen participation beyond wealthy or retired members of the community. Even with the reduced responsibilities there will still be a lot of time required to master the policy decisions for the county. While some elected boards in the County do depend on unpaid volunteers, a level of pay and benefits that encourages working folks and small business owners to seek office is desirable.

3) Some people will work more than others due to a desire to participate and they should be compensated for that extra work.

With those three things in mind, I would like to outline a proposal that I feel will address all of those issues in a fair way.

I propose structuring the pay for council members as a combination of a $500/month salary plus a $75 stipend per meeting with a cap of 100 paid meetings per year. If a member attends only the 2 scheduled meetings a month they would receive $650 for that month ($500 + 2* $75= $650). If a different council member attended two Town Council meetings to represent the County and then met with our state representatives in Olympia for seven days their pay would be $1325 for that month ($500 + 7* $75= $1325). Meetings would have to be about county business and approved by the council as a whole but I propose leaving what constitutes a "meeting" loosely defined to encourage broad participation in community affairs. In the interest of fairness I would also propose a $250/month travel allowance for the District 2 and 3 Council members to compensate them for the expense and extra time they will spend attending regular meetings in Friday Harbor. Health benefits should be the same as all other fulltime County employees.

With this pay package, the most a Council member would receive would be $13,500/year for District 1 and $16,500/year for Districts 2 and 3. The total for all six would be $90,000/year. This is far less than half of the current budget for all three full time commissioners and should allow ample money Council pay and for a full time, qualified administrator. There should also be enough extra money left if this is adopted to pay for the extra benefit packages required by the increase in number of Council members and administrator.

I believe that this model pays adequately for the time and work proposed and unlike a ‘salary only' model, it also compensates those who put in extra time. The benefits package will encourage working folks and small business owners who might currently be paying out of pocket for these expenses. The travel allowance for Districts 2 and 3 will help with costs unique to their location.

Finally, there has been a call by some demanding that current Commissioner/Council members reduce their current fulltime pay. I disagree with that call. Current members were elected under a set of conditions that constitutes an informal contract with them and the people who voted for them. They gave up jobs and changed their lives to run and I don't think that it's fair to ask them to reduce their pay. They will be putting in extra time during this transition anyway and I feel that they should be allowed to keep their current salary until the end of their term. At that point in time, they can them make a decision to run or not under the new terms established by the salary commission.

(Greg Hertel is a former freeholder and current Commissioner for the Port of Friday Harbor)