Are Council Pay Raises Good for Community?

In January of 2010, Marco Island residents voted on several Charter Amendments. One created the current City Council term limits with approval by 76% of voters. Another attempted to increase City Council salaries with a cumulative inflation adjustment covering 1997 through 2010 and automatic annual COLA increases going forward. It was soundly rejected by over 86% of voters. 

Despite the clear message from the 2010 vote, our City Council has now dredged up that old-failed pay increase proposal and added in another 13 years of inflation. If approved, the new base salary will be almost doubled for these less-than-part-time volunteer positions and will increase every year going forward. Do they really deserve a union-style compensation system? 

Councilors favoring this pay increase point to an alleged burden they will suffer when existing Florida financial disclosure rules also begin to apply to our City Council later this year. 3,000 other state, county and local elected and appointed officials across Florida have complied with these more informative disclosure rules for well over a decade, without issue. But after using the new disclosure requirements as an excuse for pay raises, Council members then decided to waste our tax dollars by suing the state in an effort to escape this legally required enhanced disclosure. 

A majority of our current Council favors large pay increases with automatic escalation forever, less transparency and disclosure, and wasting tax dollars on baseless litigation. How is that good for our community?