Pretty much since it came into office in 2014, the current Starkville Board of Aldermen have been concerned about the financial welfare of those who work for the city.
Each year, the aldermen address the subject, so it’s pretty clear the aldermen are concerned about the pay the city’s workers are receiving … especially their own.
Tuesday, by a 4-to-3 vote, the aldermen voted themselves a 33.3 percent pay raise — from $15,000 to $20,000 annually for what is a part-time job. Based on a 20-hour work week, the raise will, in 2017, take the aldermen from $14.42 per hour to $19.23 per hour.
Computing the pay rate based on a 20-hour week is probably charitable, as anyone who has attended a monthly board of aldermen meeting will attest — some aldermen appear so unfamiliar with the board meeting packet that it’s as though they are seeing it for the first time as the meeting begins. There have been other occasions where the board has acted on a measure, then complained they were “misled” when it became obvious that they had not read the information contained in the packet carefully. There can be no dispute, then. Aldermen are part-time employees.
In the same proposal, the aldermen also set a new minimum wage of $10 per hour for the 60 workers who are currently paid less than that. The cynic will note that both raises were lumped together. In fact, Ward 1 aldermen Ben Carver openly questioned why the two measures weren’t considered separately. The board’s move to raise the minimum wage while bumping their own pay is a transparent attempt to acquire political cover for a raise that is hard to justify.
Earlier this month, the West Point selectmen also considered their pay, but the outcome was far different than what transpired Tuesday in Starkville. In West Point, the selectmen voted to reduce their pay from $18,000 to $14,500 after reviewing a study from the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University, which each year prepares a report on what Mississippi cities pay their employees.
The selectmen voted to cut their pay to the level of comparable cities.
In case you were wondering, the average pay for a alderman/councilman/selectman in Mississippi is $9,308, according to that survey. Of five cities with a comparable population — Clinton, Columbus, Madison, Pascagoula and Oxford — only Columbus ($17,500) pays its elected board more than Starkville. Madison, where the cost of living is appreciably higher than it is in Starkville, pays its board members $12,000 per year.
To suggest Starkville aldermen are under-paid is a difficult case to make, in light of that data.
It is also disturbing on another level. The people we elect to these offices should be motivated to seek these jobs not for personal gain, but for public service. These jobs should not be their livelihood.
It should also be observed that raising the minimum wage has created some other pay inequities among city employees that must be addressed. After all, the worker who was already making $10 per hour has a reasonable expectation of a pay raise, too. Adjusting the minimum age has a ripple effect throughout the city’s pay scale, if fairness is a factor.
If the aldermen are to receive a raise at all, those raises should only come after these pay disparities have been remedied.
For all those reasons, we urge Starkville Mayor Parker Wiseman to veto Tuesday’s pay raise.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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