After 50 years, City Council needs pay raise

On Nov. 6, Bangor voters will decide whether to increase from $400 to $2,000 the salaries paid city councilors each year. Raising council salaries has not been a burning issue in Bangor and many voters – perhaps most voters – will be surprised to find it on the ballot. A bit of background may be helpful.

The campaign for this increase began three years ago when a committee of Bangor citizens notified the city council that they were undertaking a survey of council (and school committee) salaries paid in other Maine cities and towns. In March 1999, they submitted the results of their study, showing that Portland and Lewiston paid their councilors $4,478 and $2,700 respectively and the three cities next in size to Bangor – Auburn, South Portland and Augusta – paid $1,800, $3,000 and $1,500. The committee also studied school committee salaries and again found the $250 per year salary in Bangor well below that paid elsewhere in the state. They urged that a council pay increase be placed on the Nov. 1999 ballot and suggested that the $2,240 average of large Maine cities and towns would be an appropriate figure. They also urged the school committee to follow suit, noting that while a change in council salaries required amending the city charter and approval by the voters, the school committee was empowered to set school board salaries on its own, subject only to the up-or-down vote the city council gives the entire school budget. A recent update of that survey shows that today, Portland pays $4,939 (their councilors get more in a month than ours do in a year). Salaries have risen elsewhere as well: Bangor is dead last among the 18 cities and towns with populations over 10,000.

If voters approve the pay raise, it will not take effect until 2004, after the terms of all present council members have expired. The council rejected a proposal to change the charter so that in the future councilors would periodically get automatic cost-of-living increases. “This is exactly the kind of discussion we should have out in the open, whenever we are considering raising our own salaries,” one council member said at a recent public hearing.

Bangor city councilors have been paid $400 per year since Dec. 4, 1951, when – by a margin of 94 votes – the city charter was amended to provide a salary for councilors. In 1951, of course, prices were much lower than they are today: at the Red & White Supermarket on Harlow St., hamburger was 59 cents a pound, a new Chevrolet cost $1,540, and the newsstand price of this newspaper was five cents. Today, that $7.69 a week salary doesn’t go far, particularly if a councilor or prospective councilor is one of the many limited-income retirees in Bangor or works for an hourly wage. Most people would agree that “ability to afford the job” should not be a requirement for a public office in a democracy.

After 50 years, the time has come to bring Bangor council salaries more in line with salaries paid by taxpayers in other Maine communities; not because we need to ‘attract better candidates’, but to demonstrate something important to those who have served in the past and will serve in the future. It’s a chance to tell them in a tangible way that we value the contribution they make to this community in doing what is often a thankless job, involving endless meetings, phone calls at all hours, angry complaints and, most of all, very difficult decisions. It is, true enough, a job they seek and are proud to hold, but it is a job that costs our councilors a lot more than it does their counterparts in other Maine cities.

By and large, Bangor has been well served by its local officials. Fifty years is long enough without a pay raise.

Bill Sullivan is a resident of Bangor and a member of the Citizens Initiative Committee. A Web site with more information on this issue may be found at www.bairnet.org/50yeasrislongenough.