Taylor City Council was split in its decision to up its own salary.
Mayor Brandt Rydell and councilmen Robert Garcia and Gerald Anderson voted to approve the ordinance Thursday, Aug. 17, while councilmen Dwanye Ariola and Mitch Drummond were against the pay increase.
Rydell, who was first elected to City Council in 2012, said he voted in favor of the ordinance largely to address the increasing number of challenges and demands on the council going forward.
“I think we were long past due in addressing how we compensate those who serve on the City Council,” Rydell said. “There’s an equity argument that goes along with it.
When you have a compensation structure that is virtually nothing, that excludes a large number of people.”
He adds that he spends an average of 30 hours a week working on city business and believes council members work for about 20 hours a week.
While he was in favor of the appointed committee’s recommendation, Drummond did not support the larger increase.
“If we’re going to spend tax dollars they should benefit the community, the city at large,” Drummond said. “If the community via a committee of volunteers suggests a compensation increase to ensure adequate representation, I can support that.”
While he says most of the feedback from citizens and committees have been in favor of giving the positions a compensation increase in some fashion, Ariola said he does not believe the council should be the ones giving themself a raise.
Instead, he believes any compensation increase should have been made by changing the charter.
“The charter is clear in that we are only required to attend two meetings,” Ariola said. “That’s just the way it’s always been. Not one of us is on our first term, so it wasn’t top secret.”
He said that would consist of a charter committee reviewing the position expectations in the charter and then ultimately lead to a citizen vote.
While both council members who voted against the ordinance explained the reasoning behind their vote at the meeting itself, no members of the winning majority decided to comment before casting their vote.
Ariola said he thought none of the assenting voters speaking prior to voting was disrespectful to those who spoke during the public hearings and “doesn’t pass the smell test”.
“I thought it was telling that no comment was not made by the three that voted on why they were going to vote the way they voted,” Ariola said. “You have a very contentious, controversial ordinance and nobody spoke up in defense of it. It was complete silence.”
Meanwhile, Rydell said he personally chose not to comment because he had already made his points last November.
“I thought it’s kind of time to just get a vote,” Rydell said. “We’d all made our points in the past and see how things went. I’m eager to turn the council’s attention to other matters now. We have a lot of important issues that lay ahead of us.”
Councilman Robert Garcia declined to comment.
