Council pay raise, first in decades, kicks in Stipends remain lower than peers’

BANGOR – Long hours, late nights, lots of headaches and controversy, perhaps a little prestige but very little in terms of pay.

Until this month, that’s what residents could expect if they were elected to the City Council.

Now the annual stipend for the city’s nine councilors has increased 400 percent – from $400 to $2,000 for councilors, with an extra $500 for the chairman – because of a charter amendment approved by Bangor voters in 2001 that took effect after the Nov. 2 municipal elections.

The increase is the council’s first since 1951, when Harry Truman was president and it cost 3 cents to mail a letter and $1,540 to buy a new Chevrolet.

“It just makes you feel so good knowing that our city councilors are going to be paid – still not enough – but better,” said Charles Birkel, the Bangor resident who led the three-member citizens committee that shepherded the stipend increase through its passage.

Others who served on the self-appointed stipend panel were former Bangor Mayor Mary Sullivan, who now resides in Massachusetts, and the late Charles Helfen, a Bangor resident who monitored city issues.

“We worked on it for two years,” Birkel said. “It’s good to know that these nine people, starting this month, are going to be compensated much better than they were before.”

A few years earlier, in 1995, voters defeated a referendum measure that would have raised the council stipend to $1,500.

As part of their 2001 campaign to increase stipends, the three residents on their own submitted a report to the council establishing that stipends in Bangor lagged significantly behind those of most other communities its size in Maine.

Despite the increase that kicked in this month, Bangor’s council chairman receives the smallest stipend among Maine municipalities with populations of 20,000 or more, according to the 2004 edition of Maine Municipal Association’s annual statewide salary survey.

Council chairmen and mayors typically receive higher stipends, particularly when their positions come with administrative responsibilities, according to MMA spokesman Michael Starn.

The survey shows that Bangor’s council chairman – a position held this year by Frank Farrington – receives a smaller stipend than counterparts in Portland, South Portland, Lewiston, Auburn, Sanford and Biddeford.

“But I’m probably the mayor who got the highest increase this year,” Farrington quipped Thursday.

Bangor fares better in terms of yearly pay for elected officials who are not chairman or mayor, coming in at about the middle of the pack.

Farrington, who was on the council when the stipend increase issue was being debated, said he was opposed to the increase.

“I would hope that it stops right here,” the council chairman said.

“I think public service should be just that,” he said. “I don’t think anyone is in this for the money.

“You serve because you want to help make your community better. That’s the kind of community Bangor is.”

Starn notes that elected officials in Maine, including state lawmakers, receive less compensation than their counterparts in many states because they’re considered “citizen” rather than “professional” legislators.

“The whole salary thing, when it comes to elected officials, is a real sensitive issue,” Starn said Thursday in a telephone interview.

Because of that, he said, “We see more recognition that these people are not in the job for the pay.”

Seeking elective office, he said, “is a choice – you choose to run. In most cases, you’re running for no other reason than to provide some type of service to your community, to give back.

“But at some level, [the stipends mean] that we acknowledge that those who do service shouldn’t have to do it at their own expense,” Starn said.