Apparently four of the Starkville Board of Aldermen are still convinced they deserve a whopping 33 percent additional pay for the staggering amount of part time work they do for their constituents. If you detect sarcasm in my tone, we’re communicating.
That translates to a 67 percent raise in pay in four years. Unprecedented!
The discussion of more pay for the board has come up twice before. It has been presumably rejected twice. Is the third time the charm? Can we finally dispense with this absurd discussion? Why yes we can, unless we can convince the mayor to veto it. Because I am sad and embarrassed to say that it passed by a vote of 4 to 3.
The first time it came up some unnamed someone on the board of aldermen (Alderman Lisa Wynn) put it on the agenda as a pay raise for the employees and for the board of aldermen but not for the mayor. That was shot down by the majority of the board during an embarrassingly rude meeting on March 17 that included Ms. Wynn taking the mayor to task for driving a “pitiful little black car” and for representing Starkville at the MSU bowl game instead of city hall. Her logic was he didn’t deserve a raise that really wasn’t for him anyway since it didn’t take effect until 2017.
No kidding, some of this stuff you just can’t make up.
This time the matter was again presented as a two for one. The pay raise for the employees was tied to the pay raise for the Board. They took a page from Congress and put them together to make sure that the Mayor wouldn’t veto it. To Alderman Carver’s credit he tried to separate the issues but it failed, you guessed it, with a 4 to 3 vote.
That heralded the outcome of the ultimate vote on the issue.
Alderman Scott Maynard of Ward 5 put the final nail in the coffin of reason. Somehow he decided to change his stance. I can’t imagine he needs the money since he has a good job with MSU. I also can’t imagine he thinks the part-time nature of the job is worth the raise. We are left to guess on the deal that was struck. Stay tuned for that one.
Each member of the Starkville Board of Aldermen currently makes $15,000 per year not including the additional value from the retirement fund and the health insurance. Those perks make the compensation over $23,000 per year and that doesn’t include anywhere between $5,000 and $10,000 in annual travel benefits. I could let you guess who travels the most but since I have been taken to task for not naming names, Alderman Wynn holds that dubious distinction. Have hat will travel.
Some of the aldermen seem to be using our tax dollars to vacation around the country with the abandon of someone who isn’t paying the bill. I guess that would be because they aren’t. We are.
Now they are each going to make $20,000 per year and that will increase their total compensation package to almost $28,000. Not including travel perks. If you aren’t embarrassed by this greed, you should be. As a taxpayer if you are happy with the use of your money as a local job subsidy and vacation perk then so be it.
They have voted themselves a pay raise for part-time work that will exceed the pay of some of the full-time workers. It supposedly won’t take effect until 2017 but the last time they had a pending pay raise they moved it up by a year. Call me if you want to make book on when that raise will ultimately kick in.
When it comes time to vote again this matter will be front and center. There will be other issues to choose from in making decisions about representation, but that one smells bad enough to last for the next two years.
I so want to be proud of our city governance. From turning a blind eye to their ordinances to insulting one another at the board table to taking financial advantage of their position to self-aggrandizing speeches it has been a lack luster time and we are only halfway through.
I did call “hump day” on July 1, but that is little consolation.
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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