Statesboro City Council split 3-2 Tuesday night on a vote to move forward with a proposal for a raise of roughly 45% in council members’ pay.

If approved by the council in the near future, the raise would only take effect with the start of a new council term, in January 2024, when it would be the first raise in council members’ pay in 18 years. Mayor Jonathan McCollar asked that the mayor’s salary be left the same, and the council members backing the motion obliged.

So the pending proposal is to raise the annual salary of regular council members from the current $7,500 to $11,000 and the salary of the mayor pro tempore from the current $9,250 to $13,500. The mayor’s pay would remain unchanged at $18,500. The current rates were adopted by a different mayor and council back in 2004 and took effect in January 2006.

The topic of council pay was addressed deep in the council’s June 20 meetings, which from the start of the 3 p.m. work session to the conclusion of the 5:30 p.m. regular meeting lasted nearly five hours. It wasn’t specifically on the regular meeting agenda but had been mentioned at a previous meeting, and City Manager Charles Penny addressed it under the “city manager’s comments” agenda item.

Staff suggested 33%

With an “FYI” memo from City Attorney Cain Smith to the council members, the staff had suggested a raise of about 33% in the mayor and council members’ pay “only … to start the discussion,” Penny said. At that level, the new salary figures suggested in the memo were $10,000 for regular council members, $12,500 for the mayor pro tem and $25,000 for the mayor.

“If you were interested in increasing the current compensation package for council … we would have to advertise it and (hold) a public hearing and you’d have to act on it in council,” Penny said. “And what this would do is, you wouldn’t be raising your salary. The salary increase would not take effect until after the next election, so it would be in January 2024.”

Smith had explained these steps, in the memo, as requirements under Georgia law for a pay increase for a city’s elected officials. The law says that a raise approved by the current council “shall not be effective until after the taking of office of those elected at the next regular municipal election.”

So, as Penny acknowledged during the discussion, any raise adopted this year would be received, beginning in January, by the two council members who are not up for election this November, as well as by any of the three who are up, if they are re-elected. Of course, any new council members would also receive the new, higher salary.

“This would affect the whole council,” Penny confirmed. “It wouldn’t just give it to the three that are up this time. It would be for everybody.”

The mayor could also have received a raise beginning in January, if one were proposed for the mayor, even though his term lasts through 2025. So do the terms of District 1 Councilmember Phil Boyum and District 4 Councilmember John Riggs.

District 2 Councilmember Paulette Chavers, District 3 Councilmember Venus Mack and District 5 Councilmember Shari Barr are up for election this year. Barr is currently mayor pro tem, having been voted into that post by the other council members.

State law also requires that an elected city governing board’s proposal for a pay increase be published at least once a week for three consecutive weeks in the newspaper designated as the county legal organ before the board acts on the proposal. So, in this case, the notices are to be published in the Statesboro Herald, as Smith noted.

During the discussion, Mack said the other council members knew how she felt about it but she wanted to hear from them.

“This is not a me thing, this is a council thing. …,” she said. “I’d like to hear what y’all would like to say.”

“I don’t have a problem with the increase,” Chavers said.

Mack figured 44.7%

Mack then said that she had done some research and that, although Smith suggested a 33% raise, inflation since 2006 totaled 44.77%. So that was the increase she proposed, again adding that she wanted the others’ opinions.

“At the end of the day, we have not had a raise for council since 2004. It’s about to be 2024,” Mack said. “It’s definitely needed.”

She also said that there used to be two council meetings a  month but that since Penny arrived as city manager “we now have three a month.”

Officially, there are still only two regular council meetings most months, at 8:30 a.m. on the first Tuesday and 5:30 p.m. on the third Tuesday. As Mack explained, she was counting the public work session, now held earlier in the afternoon before the 5:30 meeting most months, as a third meeting.

However, Boyum, a member since 2013, disputed that the council meets more often than in past years.  As he noted, work sessions were held prior to Penny’s arrival, but not on as regular a schedule.

“This idea that suddenly we’re just working way more hours than we used to is baloney,” Boyum said.

Riggs asked what the salaries would be with a 45% increase, and eventually supported the  motion but  said he will listen to constituents before a final decision.

Comparison cities

Along with the memo, the mayor and council  were supplied  a 2022 Georgia Department of Community Affairs survey of city elected officials’ salaries. Statesboro wasn’t actually included, but its population of about 33,000 would place it among the “Group B” cities in the survey.

Examples from that group include Canton and Chamblee, with council member salaries of $12,000, Douglasville with $12,900, East Point with $16,000, but also Dalton with $6,000, Rome with $8,400, LaGrange with $9,600 a year, and Carrolton, $600 not per year but per “occurrence.”

Again, Statesboro’s current, regular council member salary is $7,500.

“So I was surprised when I saw the comparative listing … how little we make here in comparison to most cities our size in Georgia, and some of them don’t meet but once a month,” Barr said.

However, she said she would have been more comfortable with the originally suggested 33% raise numbers.

Chavers offered a motion for the proposed increase, actually saying 44% as the amount. But other council members said 45%, and Smith told them that dollar figures were needed for the notice. Staff members then calculated – and adjusted to rounder numbers – possible salaries of $11,000 for council members, $13,500 for mayor pro tem and $27,000 for mayor.

“I would ask that the mayor stay the same,” McCollar said.