Any changes regarding pay for Washington City Council members and the mayor cannot be made until the council begins its next round of budget deliberations.
Last month, the council briefly discussed the possibility of withholding some of a council member’s salary for missing a council meeting without that absence being excused by the rest of the council members.
“In conversations with attorneys at the School of Government, what they’ve said is there’s no authority in the General Statutes, necessarily, to do that, penalize. You can do an incentive where you say, ‘If you come to this meeting, there’s so much per meeting.’ Whether you increase salary or decrease salary, you can’t change it except at budget time by General Statute,” City Manager Brian Alligood told the council. “So, even if this new board that came in said tonight, ‘We want to do away with our entire salary,’ they would not be able to do that legally, by General Statutes. You can’t move it up and you can’t move it down except at budget time.”
Mayor Archie Jennings asked the council members if they would be comfortable discussing the issue at budget time.
“Just remember to put it in the budget discussions,” said, Councilman Doug Mercer.
Mercer brought up the proposal during the council’s Nov. 18 meeting. Mercer suggested a council member’s monthly pay be reduced by a specific amount if he or she misses one meeting a month or by another specified amount if he or she misses two meetings a month,
The council regularly meets on the second and fourth Mondays of each month, with some exceptions usually because of holidays or conflicts with other council-related functions. Council members make $6,117 annually, which equates to $509.75 per month.
“I’m certainly not trying to pick on any one individual, but we all receive a small salary every month. I think most of us know for the last several months, one of our members has not been here, but in effect has drawn his salary, or I assume drawn his salary. I would like to include in this code of conduct, if we’re going to call it that, that if a member misses a meeting and is unexcused, that he would lose one-third of his month’s salary. If he misses two meetings during a month, he would lose two-thirds of his salary,” Mercer said Nov. 18.
If a member’s absence were excused, then he or she would not lose any salary for missing a meeting, Mercer said then.