Changes may be ahead for council, mayor pay
Published 1:30 am Friday, April 21, 2023
A special meeting of the Langley City Council that was planned for Monday has been cancelled.
The agenda for the meeting, which was scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on April 24, included the consideration of first readings for two separate ordinances related to council and mayoral pay.
During a meeting last month, the council discussed raising council stipends from $50 to $125 per month. Additionally, they considered lowering the mayor’s salary, from $55,000 to as low as $12,000 annually.
Both recommendations came from the city’s citizen-led Finance and Personnel Commission, which also suggested the creation of the new position of city administrator. With the council’s approval, the city initiated the hiring process for this position.
In an April 19 memo to the council, Mayor Scott Chaplin spoke out against the decrease in salary, pointing out that at the end of the day, the mayor is ultimately responsible for all the administrative decisions made by the city as well as oversight of all employees.
“Decreasing the compensation will only drive down the number of people who would consider applying,” he wrote. “I am recommending that the compensation for the mayor’s position be increased to be commensurate with the current and expected workload and responsibilities for the next few years. It should be noted that council can raise or lower the mayor’s compensation at any time.”
Salaries for the other mayors on Whidbey take into account whether there’s a city administrator. Oak Harbor is 20 times larger than Langley, but the mayor earns just slightly more because it has a full-time administrator. Coupeville doesn’t have an administrator and the mayor earns $72,000 a year.
In an email to The Record, Chaplin announced that he does not plan on running for mayor this year.
“I would like to make sure that the position pays enough so that a single-working parent could afford to hold the position. Too often I think both city/town council and mayor positions pay so low that only retired people or those with very flexible schedules/vested interests end up running,” he said. “In my opinion, raising the compensation would encourage more professionalism and diversity.”
In Chaplin’s opinion, the mayor’s salary should depend on what type of skill levels the new city administrator and clerk possesses. He added that he would prefer to leave it to the Finance and Personnel Commission to do a compensation study looking at mayoral positions with similar support/director staffing.
