By BURTON SPEAKMAN
GLASGOW — Although it appears a majority of Glasgow City Council members remain against reducing the council’s size, another proposal will be made at the next meeting to reduce their pay.
Councilmen Harold Armstrong and Jim Marion plan to introduce an ordinance at the next council meeting that would reduce each member’s pay by half to $4,307.50, according to Armstrong.
The move would reduce the taxpayer cost of financing the council to less than the savings of eliminating three council positions, he said. The salary reducation would save $2,724.24 more than changing to nine members.
“We’re never going to go down to less than nine,” Armstrong said.
Reducing pay reaches the same economic goal and hopefully it’s an idea that the four who are looking to cut costs can support, he said.
Councilman Tim Stutler said the feedback he has received from citizens following Monday’s vote defeating the ordinance has been overwhelming for a reduction in the number of council members.
“Everything I’ve gotten, people want to see that (passage of the ordinance) happen,” he said.
Stutler also addressed the idea of reducing compensation for council members.
“I think we’re going to cut council salaries. I believe that’s going to be proposed,” Stutler said.
But just cutting the salary doesn’t get the job done, he said, and Stutler believes a smaller council would actually be more effective with more communication between members.
When asked if he would support bringing the ordinance back before the council, Stutler was unsure.
“I don’t want to reintroduce it unless we have the votes.”
He said all the council members were friends and he didn’t want to raise unnecessary conflict.
Ultimately, citizens must make council members aware of what they want done, Stutler said.
“If this is what folks want, they need to contact council members,” he said. “If we operated like most of the other city councils with six or seven members, would there be any way in the world given the current economic situation that we would vote to go to 12.”
Councilwoman Rhonda Trautman said she doesn’t support the reduction in pay, because it’s something that would be easier to reverse without providing the same type of long-term cost savings.
“There are only three percent of cities in Kentucky that have eight or more council members,” she said. “It seems to be a style of government that’s considered a little bit out of date.”
The city of Glasgow currently spends $196,943 per year in salary and benefits for its 12 council members. The salary for each of the 12 is $8,615 per year. With benefits included, the cost for the city can be as low as $10,135, which is what Trautman receives in salary and benefits, to as much as $21,749, which is what the city pays for council members Brad Groce and Stutler. Stutler was the council member who proposed reducing the council to nine members at the next election and then to seven at the following election. Based on his benefits package, he is one of the two council members with the most in benefits to lose if not re-elected.
Trautman said one of the reasons that she supported reducing the council was the saving for the taxpayers.
During the current fiscal year every department has been asked for ways to cut costs. This is a way for the legislative part of the city government to reduce its costs, she said.
Councilwoman Jeanne Scalise stated there are other ways for the city to reduce its cost for the city council other than reducing members.
“I suggested if things are that tight, that we could return a quarter of our pay or not accept pay for meetings that we cannot attend,” she said.
The 12-member council is the way it’s been in Glasgow for as long as she can remember, Scalise said. The current set up has helped the city.
Residents of the city would lose a lot in terms of representation if the council size were reduced, said Councilman Jimmy Ferrell.
“When something is not broke don’t try to fix it,” he said.
Ferrell said he receives as many as four or five calls per week from people with various types of problems.
“When people call, I don’t tell them to call someone else,” he said.
Calls from constituents have led Ferrell to sometimes be out in the evening, helping to clean someone’s ditch or take care of another problem, he said.
If the number of council members were reduced, the members would not have time to go out and do those kinds of things, Ferrell said.
“I’ve gotten a number of calls from people supporting me and telling me to keep doing what I’m doing,” he said. “I’m going to vote against it (reducing the council size) again and I hope all the rest of them do too.”
The current size and dynamic of the city council has everyone with the city well-represented, Armstrong said.
“It has all areas of the city covered, black residents, white residents and male and female are all well-represented,” he said. “If we reduced to seven, I don’t think we’ll be as well-represented.”
It is better for the city to have the ideas of 12 people compared to seven or even nine, Armstrong said. It’s better to reduce the pay and keep the overall representation.
The idea of a cross-representation of Glasgow’s communities and population might make sense if the city council was elected by a ward system, but council members are elected at-large, Trautman said.
In addition it’s not the job of council members to call department heads when residents have problems, she said.
“When someone calls me with a problem, I tell them that I’ll inform the mayor’s office or they can call the mayor’s office if it has something to do with city departments,” Trautman said.
Kentucky law prohibits a council member from providing orders to city workers, leaving that role to the mayor in Glasgow’s form of government.
In 42 years in Glasgow and being around city government, Councilman Doug Isenberg said he has learned a little bit about what the city needs to work.
The public wasn’t given enough information during Monday’s meeting to make an informed decision about how the council should be organized, he said. They were given a bunch of numbers that are probably true, but they don’t account for all the services Glasgow has that need oversight that similar size or larger cities don’t have.
Glasgow has utilities such as electric, water, trash and sanitation services that all need oversight and a lot of cities don’t have their own that need oversight, Isenberg said.
“With the current council makeup and committee structure, I don’t know if the work of 12 could be done by seven people,” he said. “I don’t think anyone would want to be an expert on all those things.”
Most of the city council members sit on four or five committees even with the reduced structure approved this year.
Isenberg also added that council members can call department managers, but they just cannot demand things be done.
“If something doesn’t cost money other than time and manpower, I’ve found them (department heads) to be very responsive,” he said.
Jim Marion had made the suggestion that if cost-cutting was the true reason for reducing the size of the council he would be more in favor of cutting pay instead of cutting the number of representatives.
Simply cutting the pay of all 12 city council members would save about $30,000 less than the average cost saving of eliminating five council positions. A pay reduction would save $51,960 a year, while position eliminations would save an estimated $82,059.60, but the full cost savings for the city under Stutler's plan would not occur for two election cycles.
The public needs to let its leadership know how they feel about this issue, Trautman said.
Trautman said she has received numerous calls with all of them favoring a reduced council size.
Although those who voted against the measure have also stated they received calls of support.
Isenberg said that’s because people tend to call council members they know and support their decision.
This was a situation where it could have helped the city in current economic times, said Councilman Freddie Norris.
“(The size of the council) is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” he said. “I was glad to see someone put in the time researching it.”
Reducing the number of council member is something that could be brought back in a few years, Norris said.
It will be interesting at the next meeting to hear the conversation about reducing council pay, he said.
“That sounds like a good possible solution,” Norris said.
Attempts were made to contact each member of the city council for this story.
Daily Times reporter Lisa Simpson Strange contributed to this article. Editor’s note: All figures used to represent cost were estimates made using the average cost of $16,411.92. It is impossible to know which city council members would be voted into office and what benefit levels they would receive. Currently the total pay and benefits for Glasgow City Council members varies from $10,135 to $21,749.
