Editorial - Mayor's salary

City council is talking of doubling the next mayor's salary. In 2006, before the last mayoral election, council tripled the mayor's salary. Do exponential pay raises buy the city better governance? History would indicate the answer is "no."

Thirty years ago, the mayor and aldermen received token salaries. Aldermen earned $200 a year, which they were expected to donate to the city employee holiday turkey fund. These public servants had lots of responsibility: With aldermen, considerably more was expected of them than is now, when they earn $2,400 a year for attending bi-monthly meetings and don't have to buy any turkeys. Back then they were required to sit on committees developing budgets and overseeing police, fire and other city departments, and meet in those proverbial smoke-filled back rooms.

The mayor's job has also changed significantly over the years, with the level of responsibility and power waxing and waning. In the early '80s, the city clerk/treasurer and assistant clerk carried the workload at city hall; the mayor presided over council, those back-room meetings, and set policies. Later, responsibility for daily operations shifted to a mayor's administrative assistant, a position that ultimately became the most powerful job in town. While the mayor still has an assistant, since 2003 the mayor's been running the show at city hall.

The person running the city should be adequately compensated, but if taxpayers are going to pay a real salary, the person being compensated should be competent to do the job. Under the current form of government there are no such guarantees. While we won't know for a couple of weeks who the candidates for mayor are, based on rumors and speculation it does not look promising. Nary a bright bulb nor sharp crayon in the mix (Blankenship excepted).

The proposed $36,000 is approaching a decent starting salary for someone to run a city this size, but offering a livable wage does not guarantee a qualified person will run for office and win. And there's little recourse if an inept, lazy or personal-agenda-driven mayor is elected; they can't be recalled or fired. Instead, voters must wait four long years to toss the dice again in hopes of getting some level of "eptitude."

The city was run most professionally with a strong administrative assistant under a mayor who was more a visionary and goodwill ambassador. But a recurring problem in those times was administrative assistants overstepping their authority and the city having a de facto city administrator with little oversight. The last powerful administrative assistant actually misrepresented herself as the "City Administrator" on city stationery and elsewhere, and actively worked to sabotage her boss, the mayor, who was attempting to provide some oversight.

There is another option for running the city -- the City Administrator form of government. Under this system, the public elects a board of directors and ceremonial mayor to legislate and set policy; the elected board hires an administrator to fulfill the executive responsibilities. Eureka Springs voters have twice rejected changing to the administrator type government, in 1980 and 2004; the last time by a margin of 30 votes.

We were against the change both times, very publicly so in 2004. But reasons for opposing the switch were not based on the merits of the proposal, but rather on the motives of those advocating for it. Both times the issue was raised by the mayor's political opponents as an attempt to throw out the elected mayor. Those advocates insist their motives weren't political, but they never push to change when the mayor is their ally.

Any discussion of a mayoral pay raise should include a debate on the form of government. There are arguments to be made for a city administrator -- competence, professionalism, continuity, etc. -- although having one would not be a panacea. There are no guarantees the person hired would be the right person, or that they'd stay; and at city hall there will always be politics. But unlike with a mayor, the hiring would be résumé-based and a bad administrator could be fired. If we're going to pay "the big bucks," the people should know they are getting their money's worth.

The timing of the pay raise discussion is dumb, and not just because budgets are tight. Unless done as an "emergency," by the time the matter is settled, the candidate filing period will be closed. So those filing won't know what the pay will be, and those motivated to run because of the raise will have missed the deadline. Why wasn't this brought up last year?

Bill King