The Price of Democracy: What's a Councilor Worth?

City Councilors and the Mayor are paid employees of the City. Currently, City Councilors are paid $4,000 per year and the Mayor receives $7,500. They have not received a raise in almost a decade. On the one hand, we wonder if they should be paid at all. After all, the School Board, the Planning Board, and the Zoning Board of Appeals are not paid. On the other hand, if there are good reasons for a salary, we wonder what a fair wage would be.

By the end of 2008, the new Council had met over 40 times since being inaugurated on January 1, 2008. To put that in perspective, it’s about a dozen more meetings than the former Council had in 2007, almost twice as many meetings as were had in 2006, and over two times the amount Council met in 2005, when only 18 meetings were held during the entire year.

And not only has the frequency of meetings increased, but the overall time spent in meetings has increased as well. On a rough average, Council meetings in 2008 were about 4 hours in length. That means that City Councilors, assuming they attend every meeting, have logged about 160 hours governing the City, as body.

In addition to the Council meetings and work sessions, Councilors have numerous other responsibilities: e-mails, phone calls, interacting with constituents, attending meetings and events of other groups and committees, reading reports and preparing for meetings, and researching and studying various issues. These activities would fall under “engaged governance,” which was identified by Council as one of its new priorities, described there as what Councilors do “in between meetings.” A truly engaged Councilor, who does all of these things, is likely spending somewhere close to 20 hours/week on City-related business.

So, let’s say a Councilor does only the bare minimum--showing up at meetings (again, we’ll assume perfect attendance). For 2008, this means that Councilors received roughly $25/hour before taxes (none of the positions are eligible for retirement or health care benefits and therefore do not have those items withheld). Someone who makes $25/hour at a full time job would earn, at an annual rate, $52,000/year.

On the other end of the spectrum, someone who is very engaged, well prepared, and committed to serving the public whenever and wherever needed, is being paid at a rate of about $8/hour. That’s comparable to a full time job that pays less than $20,000/year. (But remember that Councilors do, in reality, only receive a total of $4,000 in annual compensation).

Now, let’s look back on 2006, a year when many interesting things were happening in the City, certainly not a bright spot for open and accountable governing. Again, assuming that each of the 20 meetings was about 4 hours long, that means that the ‘bare minimum’ Councilor earned about $50/hour, a rate that would pay over $100,000 as a full time job.

Not too long ago, the Finger Lakes Times reported that the governing board of the Town of Geneva gave itself a sizeable raise. Unfortunately the local paper created a great deal of confusion by stating “Town Councilors” had received an increase and were divvying up a one-time lump sum retroactive payment. The Town of Geneva is governed by a Town Board whose members are called Board Members. The City of Geneva is governed by a City Council whose members (8) are called Councilors and a Mayor who has equal voting rights. To set the record straight, that article was about the Town, not the City.

We’re NOT advocating for a pay raise for City Council. What we want to point out is the disparity in pay for activity and inactivity. Under the previous administration, Council gave most of its decision-making power over to the appointed Manager, and they didn’t even complete the annual performance evaluations that would have given at least a modicum of accountability to the post. This created what we termed an ‘inversion of power’ and it was bad business for Geneva. But with this inversion came less work for Council, and at the same rate of pay, it meant that Council was essentially earning more money for doing less.

It seems that the concept of engaged governance has brought back the notion of ‘public service’ in Geneva. The Councilors are not volunteers, but their compensation seems, for the most part, to be more of a token stipend than a salary commensurate with the work being performed. What do you think?