Walnut Grove City Council looks at pay raise process

After kicking the idea of potentially boosting council and mayoral compensation around for a few months with no appreciable progress, the Walnut Grove City Council has signed on to a process presented by City Administrator Joe Morris that could produce a final decision, but not until the end of this year.

“I’m a firm believer in this process taking a long time,” Morris told Mayor Stephanie Moncrief and the council.

Whatever the council may decide – Moncrief won’t get a vote unless the four-member council deadlocks at decision time – any increases would not take effect until after the city’s next election cycle.

Morris presented his plan at a called July 9 council meeting, more than three months after the council initially considered the compensation issue at a non-voting March 26 work session.

The issue was brought up by Councilwoman Rachel Davis, who suggested in March that growth in the city – Walnut Grove’s current population sits between 1,500 and 1,700 people, up somewhere around 300 people since the 2020 census – justified an increase in mayoral and council compensation.

Davis also suggested at the time that increasing compensation for the mayor and council might attract additional, and more-qualified, candidates for the mayor’s office and the four council seats.

Initial discussion contemplated boosting compensation for the mayor’s office from the current $700 monthly to $850 per month, with compensation for city council members rising from the current $400 monthly stipend to $475 per month.

Davis also suggested additional compensation of $125 monthly for the mayor pro tem (a council member chosen by the council to represent the city when the mayor cannot do so), and a $25 payment to council members for attending meetings — outside of regular council meetings — that serve city interests. Neither of those suggestions, however, got much traction with the council.

The compensation discussion has not really strayed from those initial numbers, but that could change under the plan unveiled by Morris at the called July 9 meeting.

The first step in that plan, which is already underway, is for Morris to collect data on compensation for elected officials in similarly sized cities.

Beyond that, though, Morris’ data collection, set for presentation to the council at a non-voting July 30 work session, will incorporate the complexity of those governments, their administrative structure, and their revenue sources.

The July 30 work session, currently set for 10 a.m. – as are all council work sessions – is open to the public and will be held at the Municipal Building at 1021 Park Street.

Once Morris’ data is presented to the council, the next step at the work session will be a determination as to whether the mayor and council need or want additional information for framing an eventual decision on compensation.

A further step in the process approved by the council will come at an Aug. 27 work session, where discussion will center on whether compensation should be extended to include additional benefits for the mayor and council.

The end goal for the Aug. 27 work session is to develop a final compensation proposal, which will be formalized in a Sept. 10 public meeting.

But that won’t necessarily end the process approved by the council. Once a compensation proposal is in place, Morris’ proposal provides an option for appointing a special committee in September to provide advice on the plan.

At the July 9 meeting, Morris told the council he recognizes “committees are not easy to fill,” but added that he “did want it to be an option” for addressing the compensation issue.

If put in place, the committee would subsequently hold an open meeting and public hearing on Oct. 1, at which the committee will offer a recommendation on compensation to the council.

From there, a Nov. 5 public hearing – advertised publicly for three consecutive weeks from Oct. 14 through Nov. 4 — will provide Walnut Grove residents with notice of the council’s intent regarding compensation, and an opportunity to offer comment on it.

Once all that is done, the council is scheduled to hold a formal vote on any new compensation package at a Dec. 10 meeting.

Moncrief, reacting at the July 9 meeting to Morris’ proposal, said, “I like that we have a structured plan” for addressing the compensation issue.

For his part, Morris is committed to the attention to detail and the transparency that will be brought to the compensation issue under the multiple-step plan for consideration and action by the council.

“If they decide to do it, I want the public to see why,” Morris said in an interview after the July 9 meeting on his recommended approach to the compensation issue.