Council pay

Shielded by the work of a citizen’s committee, the Bangor City Council is edging toward a substantial pay raise for city councilors. The raise – from the current $400 annually to $2,000 – would be placed before voters in November and, if passed, wouldn’t take effect until 2003, after councilors had served their current terms. The care with which councilors are handling this issue is understandable, given their potential to profit from it, but there is no reason for them to be timid about the raise: Bangor pays far too little for a difficult job and a raise is long overdue.

The $400 stipend councilors now receive has been in effect for a half century, since 1951. An equivalent stipend today would be approximately $2,700. Various councilors and residents for the last decade have noted that Bangor councilors were the worst paid of any comparable city in Maine. The Maine Municipal Association reports that salaries for councils in 2000 were $4,843 for Portland; $2,700 in Lewiston; and $2,400 in Augusta. Current Bangor pay is comparable only with Presque Isle, a city one-third Bangor’s population. Yet a 1995 ballot question to increase the stipend in Bangor was soundly rejected by voters.

The best reason for the raise, however, is not what other cities pay or how long it has been since Bangor increased its pay but what council Chairman John Rohman expressed: “My concern,” he said, “is that we limit the number of folks that are willing to run when it affects them in the pocketbook.” That is an important point, running for office and serving costs money. Not only does the council needlessly have term limits, its low pay adds another barrier to participation in a city that needs as many people as possible working together to solve the really large problems of economic vitality, career opportunity for the region’s young adults and service-center pressures, among many others. The same goes for the city’s School Committee, which also needs a significant pay raise above its current dismal level of $250 a year and similarly has no use for term limits, which are now being considered.

The citizen’s committee recommends $2,000 per year for councilors and $2,500 for the council chairman, to be increased annually based on the increase provided to recipients of Social Security. The annual adjustment is a nice touch – for those living on a so-called fixed income, knowing that council members were receiving increases neither more nor less than what they received would be a comforting thought. The city

of Portland, perhaps less imaginatively but more practically, raises council pay based on its cost-of-living adjustment for nonunion city employees.

The $2,000 level and a fair form of regular increase should be approved by the council. However, if councilors feel better sending the question out to voters, they should do so not shyly or apologetically, but with the strong assertion that the job warrants the money and that spending this relatively small sum is one important way to keep these public offices open to everyone.