Grand Forks City Council members agreed Monday to give themselves their first raise in 16 years.
Saying that the time they spend on their duties deserve more than the current council salary of $5,200 a year, they voted 6-1 on a raise.
Council President Hal Gershman, who is retiring from the council after the June elections, said he is pushing for the pay hike because the council actually gets paid “less than minimum wage.”
He has said council members spend six to 20 hours a week on their duties, which works out to $5 to $17 an hour. North Dakota’s minimum wage is $7.25, the same as the federal rate.
ADVERTISEMENT
Starting in July, council members will receive salaries of $14,100 a year, a 171 percent increase. The dollar figure is the average of what council members in the other three big cities in the state earn.
This benchmarking is roughly the same way city staff’s compensation is determined, though there is also a pay-for-performance component that the council will not deal with.
But it also means council members here will be the third-highest paid in the state, ahead of Bismarck, which pays $12,400, but behind Fargo, which pays $22,800.
Council member Terry Bjerke, who cast the dissenting vote, said he’s not comfortable getting paid more than $8,000 a year and would either refuse to get paid anything more if tax laws didn’t forbid it or he would give away the difference to charity.
The council also voted to match the mayor’s pay to that of mayors in the other three big cities, but that would likely bring down the mayor’s $24,000-a-year pay. The average of the three comes out to $20,000.
The highest paid mayor, Fargo’s, gets $29,000 a year.
City Administrator Todd Feland said the mayor’s pay probably won’t be cut in July but the city could look at it next year.
The way council members voted to set the pay scale, it would change annually based on the pay of their peers in the other three cities. Again, this is similar to the process city staff goes through.
ADVERTISEMENT
The last time the council attempted to increase its pay was in 2002, when the council downsized from 14 members to seven. A majority of the council voted against the move, including Gershman. He’d been on the council two years at that point.
It would break faith with citizens who were told a downsized council would cost them less, he said then.
Now, with 14 years behind him, he sees it differently. On Monday, he supported his argument for a pay increase, which he himself won’t enjoy, by noting that the downsizing means that the city has half as many council members to pay. The city saved $440,000 as a result, he said.
Council member Tyrone Grandstrand, who seconded Gershman’s motion to increase pay, said the added pay would help broaden the council’s demographic. Many people, he said, can’t afford to give away their work for less than minimum wage.
