It’s time to let City Council members of the Programs & Services Committee know your opinion on whether or not our elected officials (the Mayor, City Council and School Committee members) should receive raises. The period for public comments is expected to close at the P & S meeting on Wednesday, September 4th. It is unclear how much any proposed raises would be, since the committee did not seem to favor the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Salaries. The City Council plans to vote by the end of September so any raised would go into effect in 2020.
Andrea Steenstrup, a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Salaries, recently send the letter below to the Mayor and the City Council:
To the members of the Newton City Council and Mayor Fuller:
I served on the Blue Ribbon Commission studying the potential for a salary increase for elected officials in our city. These comments are my own and are not meant to represent the opinions of the commission. While I mostly discuss the City Council, the same sentiment applies to School Committee Members. I highly respect the members of our City Council and School Committee, and in no way mean to discredit their hard work and service to our community. I am looking at this solely from what the Blue Ribbon Commission concluded and from what I think is best financially for the city.
While we briefly discussed the fiscal implications of our recommendations and were cognizant of cost factors, the Commission agreed and understood it was not within our scope to weigh the full budget impact of any given stipend increase. We concluded that the City Council would bear full responsibility for vetting the fiscal implications of our proposal.
With that in mind, our original recommendation was to change the offerings for elected officials to one of only a cash stipend and not to offer health or other benefits. There were several reasons we came to this conclusion, not the least of which was the difference in remuneration between those who took family insurance coverage and those who took none – currently for City Council, this difference is $9,750 vs $31,000 annually. We were also advised by former elected officials, that while people may not choose to run for elected office specifically seeking the health and pension benefits, a number of incumbents would seek to stay in office because of these benefits. Our intent was to incent people to run, not incent the incumbents to stay.
We also talked about the OPEB obligations of the city and how not offering health insurance to elected officials would, in some small way, help to not increase the future obligations of the city.
Our original number of $18,000 for the stipend for City Councilors was ONLY with the assumption that health insurance would no longer be offered. This was a cost neutral approach, taking the money currently paid for stipend and benefits and spreading it equally as stipend among the 24 Councilors. Again – to be crystal clear, this number was assuming no health insurance coverage. At no time did we entertain the idea of raising the stipend to $18,000 while still offering health insurance. For the City Council to even consider this as an option is going against the spirit and intent of the recommendations of the committee. When we looked at other cities, we deliberately choose not to recommend a stipend near the average because Newton has more than twice the amount of city councilors as every one of those comparable cities. We felt we could not ignore the difference in aggregate compensation
Unfortunately, very near to the end of our deliberation, we found out that not offering health insurance was viewed by the city to not be a feasible option. We had to quickly shift gears and come up with plan b. Working with our intentions of decreasing the gap between those who take insurance and those who do not, and also hoping for the added benefit of decreasing the number of elected officials taking costly health insurance and potentially being eligible for lifetime benefits, we came up with the idea of the $5,000 incentive to not take health insurance. Some of us voted to make the $5,000 incentive the only form of raise given. When considering the disproportionate value of the health insurance, for someone who took family health insurance since 1998, while the dollar value of their stipend has not increased, the value of their health insurance has increased nearly 400% ($5,394 annual premium for Tufts family in 1998 to $20,089 for Tufts family today), and the value of their total compensation has increased 200%. ($15,144 to $29,839). The total compensation, with family health insurance has gone up 28% more than the CPI since 1998. Even more disturbing is the fact that in 1998, a Councilor taking family health insurance received 1.5 times the compensation of a councilor that didn’t ($15,144 vs $9750), today that councilor is making 3 times as much, $29,839 vs $9,750).
I hope you do the right thing and consider the intent of the Blue Ribbon Commission and the financial state of the city while deliberating on any increase. While the aggregate dollar value of the raise may be small in comparison to the entire city budget, it still represents something else in the budget that will be cut, whether it be one teacher, or a major playground improvement, some road or other infrastructure improvement, or, as in the past, closure of a branch library.
At this point, if the City Council decides to raise the compensation of the City Council, the $14,000 stipend recommended by the Blue Ribbon Commission is the absolute highest annual compensation that should be considered, while health benefits are still being offered.
Furthermore, I hope future commissions, or even the current city council, further pursue the notion of not providing direct health benefits and providing only a cash stipend, with which the elected officials could do what they please, whether that be pay for health insurance via the health connector, pay for child care, pay their cell phone bills, get coffee – their choice. The price and the ability to obtain health insurance has changed dramatically since the time our elected officials were originally granted these benefits. Other cities, including the City of Everett (copy of Everett’s Charter attached – see section 2-4 a) in Massachusetts do not offer health benefits to their City Council and School Committee. In line with the original planned recommendation of the Blue Ribbon Commission, I truly believe this is the best option for Newton.
Great letter Andrea! I think she really covers and clarifies the intent of the Blue Ribbon panel well. I agree that that idea of not providing health insurance should be pushed further. Not only does providing the health insurance create a huge inequity among Councilors, it also leaves the City responsible for costs which have been rising dramatically that they have no control over.
Two things seem odd.
First, the city sets up this commission and when they’re almost done says, oh, by the way, you can’t get rid of health insurance.
Second, it’s one level of generous to provide health insurance for what is supposed to be a part-time job. But who else out there in the readership can get family coverage through a part-time job?
Interesting statement about wanting to incent people to run, not incenting people to stay. A nice goal, but I’m not sure that’s really possible, unless we had a bonus payment the first time you get elected. Now maybe that would be a good way to have more contested races! 🙂
[Full disclosure – I am, of course, a non-incumbent candidate.]
I was a member of the BRC who did not vote in support of the final recommendations, not because I didn’t support them, but because I did not feel the public had a chance to weigh in on the commission’s final draft.
Now, with perhaps a different recommendation coming from Programs & Services, we seem destined to be making that same mistake twice.
I simply don’t understand how the council can close public comment next week when we still don’t know what the committee is proposing to put forward.
Until the size of the City Council is reduced there should be no increased compensation.
The city should not rush this decision. We have taken ten years to discuss later high school times and twenty plus years to implement full day kindergarten. Why rush this decision????
And any decision should affect new people and not already elected officials (for the better or the worse),
I still don’t understand how elected part time officials qualify for the health care benefits.
If you worked part time at J.P. Licks or CVS or China Fair would the part time employee receive health care benefits?
We didn’t understand it either on the Blue Ribbon Commission but we discovered that both the benefit qualifications and the pension rules were far more complicated than we wished and often driven by state requirements. Our findings are outlined starting on page 3 “Background” of the commission’s report.
I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments expressed in Councilor Cote’s letter to the Commission and encourage others to read it. The councilors haven’t had a raise since 1998. Is there anyone working any job who hasn’t received a raise since 1998??? I don’t think so.
The city councilors are also some of the most important employees in the City of Newton. I certainly don’t agree with some of their recent votes on development but suggesting taking away their access to health insurance is mean spirited when they’ve had it for a number of years.
These people work hard and we are fortunate to have such capable people trying to keep Newton one of the best places to live in the country. Their salaries and benefits are a minuscule part of the budget. I hope they vote themselves a raise this fall.
One of the points that Andrea makes in her letter is that about half the Council has gotten a raise, if you consider the increased cost of health insurance. While they haven’t seen an increase in their stipends, those that take health insurance have seen a large increase in total compensation as the value of their health insurance from the City has increased.
I agree that some or maybe even most Councilors spend a lot of time on the job, but we have to agree on what we are compensating them for. Is it the amount of hours? If so, then perhaps we need to clarify our expectations for the job and the work the City Council does. Is the compensation more an honorarium or an amount to cover the direct costs of doing the job? Or perhaps its like other jobs, when it’s a statement of how well they are doing their work?
While its true that these increases are not a large part of the budget, there seems to be extreme pressure this year on City resources–all union contracts are being negotiated, the increase in the school budget is not enough to maintain both smaller class sizes and breadth of programming, and the NewCAL project is a big question mark in terms of finances.
Is this the right time for an increase, especially considering since we haven’t seen any financial evaluation of a salary increase proposal? The BRC was specifically told not to consider alternative uses of any proposed increased–it was not our job to consider if it was more important to give a raise to our elected officials or to Newton teachers–that was on the City Council. The discussion of the Programs & Services Committee so far has not addressed this issue.
While I agree that the compensation of other city employees should not considered as part of the councilor compensation package, it would be unwise for the council to vote itself a raise when all 17 city unions are working without a negotiated contract. I’ve expressed support for a significant increase in councilor salary, but believe the vote on this item should take place after all employee contracts are settled.
As for how many hours councilors works, that’s a dicey question, as they have more control over the number of hours they put into the job. The school system has capped the number of hours part time school aides who work with the most vulnerable student at 19 hours, even when they are willing and able to work more hours, because if they work 20 hours, they qualify for health benefits. I want everyone to have health benefits, but it must be done fairly and with the best of intentions.
Sue, thank you for pointing out “…and the NewCAL project is a big question mark in terms of finances.”
Perhaps the Mayor should currently be excluded from pay raise consideration as apparently already having a lot of spare work time to be wasted on her odyssey, the “NewCAL in the Park” Sports/Athletic Complex.