Bloomington city council committee: Double pay for members to $45K in 2025, raise clerk to $129K, put mayor level with some staff at $151K

A four-member Bloomington city council committee has recommended that salaries for members of the city’s legislative body more than double in 2025.

In 2024, Bloomington city councilmembers made $21,153. If the council follows the committee’s recommendation, the nine councilmembers would each be paid $45,423 in 2025.

The salary ordinance for city elected officials will get a first reading next Wednesday (Dec. 4). But under Bloomington’s local law on meeting procedure, the ordinance will not get any discussion that night.

The ordinance—which also sets the pay for the elected city clerk and the mayor—is expected get a vote at the council’s final scheduled meeting of the year, set for the following week, on Dec. 11.

The committee’s proposal would also give the position of city clerk a significant increase, about 50-percent, from $87,000 this year to $129,780 in 2025. That follows a 34-percent increase from $64,773 in 2023 to this year’s figure.

The compensation for the position of mayor would be set at $151,410 for 2025, which is a 9.5-percent increase from this year’s $138,031. At $151,410, the mayor’s salary would match the 2025 year-end projected compensation of four other high-level staff positions—city engineer, chief of police, IT director, and director of public works.

Bloomington’s mayor is currently the highest paid city employee.

Chair of the four-member committee that made the recommendation, after meeting a half dozen times starting in early October, was Sydney Zulich. Joining Zulich on the committee were Matt Flaherty, Kate Rosenbarger, and Hopi Stosberg.

Setting compensation for elected officials based on employee salary grades

The reference point for the recommended salaries for elected officials is the city’s new 14-point salary grade system. Building on a study done by Crowe LLP, which was commissioned by former mayor John Hamilton, overhauling the city’s compensation system was one of the bigger projects in the first year of Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson’s term.

The project was led by Thomson’s new HR director, Sharr Pechac. The old non-union salary system had 12 grades, each with a range of compensation. Each job title is assigned a grade. The compensation for the person with the job title falls somewhere in the range, based on time of service.

The new system has 14 grades, many (but not all) of them with significantly higher salaries, at both the low end as well as the high end of the ranges. According to the mid-June memo from HR director Pechac, the purpose of the new salary grade system is to “relieve pay compression between mid-level employees and their supervisors, as well as to better differentiate between grades.”

Under the new 14-grade system, heads of city departments appointed by the mayor are not all assigned to the top grade as they were under the old system.

Assigned to grade 13 are directors of the following departments: economic and sustainable development (Jane Kupersmith); human resources (Sharr Pechac); planning and transportation (David Hittle); housing and neighborhood development (Anna Killion-Hanson); community and family resources (Shatoyia Moss); and parks and recreation (Tim Street).

Assigned to grade 14 are directors of the following departments: fire (Roger Kerr); police (Mike Diekhoff); utilities (Kat Zaiger); legal (Margie Rice); controller (Jessica McClellan); information technology (Rick Dietz); public works (Adam Wason); and engineering (Andrew Cibor). The deputy mayor position (Gretchen Knapp) is also assigned a grade 14.

Within each pay grade there are five steps, based on years of service: Step 1 (starting pay); Step 2 (1 year); Step 3 (3 years); Step 4 (5 years); and Step 5 (10 years).

For all but the lowest three grades, each step is an extra 7.5 percent of the starting salary, which is the low end of the range. By way of example, deputy mayor Gretchen Knapp will start 2025 with a salary of $131,661, which is the low end for grade 14. But within a couple of days after Jan. 1, she will pass her 1-year anniversary, which will put her at Step 2, which is $141,535.

Responding to an emailed question from The B Square, Pechac described these initial figures as the “Phase 1 implementation of the salary study” and described the numbers she gave for department heads appointed by the mayor as “tentative” figures, which would correspond to the year-end figure for some of them, after they pass a work anniversary during 2025.

Setting pay for elected officials based on employee salary grades: Mayor

As the right amount for the mayor’s compensation, the four-member committee settled on the mid-point (Step 3) of grade 14, which is $151,410.

It’s an approach that would pay the mayor less than grade 14 department heads who have five or more years of experience. Those with five or more years of experience in grade 14 jobs include chief of police Mike Diekhoff, head of public works Adam Wason, and IT director Rick Dietz.

But those long-tenure positions have been capped at Step 3 for the initial rollout of the new salary grade system. Responding to an emailed question from The B Square, deputy mayor Knapp wrote: “We capped their compensation for this first year at Step 3, even if their tenure is longer, since we want to both ensure we have funds to cover all city employees’ increases as the process continues in 2025…”

The effect of the cap is to put the mayor’s proposed compensation level with four of the city’s department heads.

The committee’s report covers the topic like this:

The Committee concluded that the Mayor need not be the highest-paid person in city government (which has been the recent practice, and is an arbitrary way to set a salary), but that the role should be compensated at a level similar to the highest-paid senior leadership positions.

Setting pay for elected officials based on employee salary grades: Clerk

The committee weighed but rejected the idea of setting the city clerk’s salary as some percentage of the mayor’s salary. But the committee did wind up adopting a recommendation for council salaries defined as a fraction of the mayor’s salary.

The committee decided that picking the mid-point of one of the grades assigned to heads of departments appointed by the mayor was also appropriate for the clerk. The committee is recommending that the clerk be paid at the midpoint of salary grade 13, which is $129,780.

From the committee’s report: “[A]ligning the Clerk’s salary with the leaders of other city departments (colloquially, department heads) was the best approach based on the responsibilities and nature of the Clerk’s role.”

The specific responsibilities of Bloomington’s city clerk aren’t laid out in the committee report. They include statutorily defined duties like maintaining the city council’s records (meeting minutes, ordinances, resolutions, etc.), updating Bloomington’s city code, and posting required notices of the city council’s meetings. The office of Bloomington’s city clerk also hears and adjudicates parking ticket appeals.

The city clerk also certifies documents and cemetery deeds; prepares and arranges public notices; serves as a satellite voting voter registration office; updates and maintains the Bloomington city code; and coordinates recruitment for city boards and commissions.

This year’s budget calls for staffing of the clerk’s office with four deputy clerks.

Last year, the council was divided on the question of increasing the clerk’s salary.  The council agreed on a substantial increase to $87,000, but that still fell short of the $104,000 that some councilmembers wanted.

Setting pay for elected officials based on comparison to mayor’s salary: Council

The idea that the position of mayor should be the standard of comparison for the compensation of each individual councilmember is based on the idea that the council as a body is the legislative branch of government, meant to check and balance the executive. From the report’s basis for salary setting:

Councilmember: As a coequal branch of government, yet given the part-time nature of the role, salary to be set at a percentage of the mayor’s salary. Percentage to be determined based on number of hours required to meet expectations.

The committee asked both incumbent clerk Nicole Bolden and mayor Kerry Thomson for their input on the recommendation. Their statements are included as a part of the committee report.

Thomson wrote in part:

The Mayor’s salary should reflect the level of responsibility required to lead and make decisions for the human and real resources of the entire city, the complexity of the job, the requirement to be on call 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and also the impact of decisions on the community and the region.

The committee’s report picks up on Thomson’s description of the mayor’s role as one that is “on call,” and applies that description to the role of councilmember as well. From the report: “Like the Mayor and Clerk, Councilmembers serve in a role that is ‘on call’ to a significant degree by its nature.”

To determine the number of hours that are required to “meet expectations” the committee surveyed all nine councilmembers to find out the number of hours they think councilmembers should spend on different tasks, in order to provide high quality service. The tasks were: time preparing for meetings; constituent and community services; hours in noticed meetings; legislative and policy development, review, and refinement; other.

The average total number of hours that councilmembers gave across categories was 16.67 hours, but “out of an abundance of caution” the committee chose the lowest number of hours from any councilmember as the fraction to recommend. That was 12 hours or 30 percent of a 40-hour work week.

Multiplying 30 percent by $151,410, the recommended total for the mayor, yielded $45,423 as the committee’s recommended compensation for city councilmembers.

The report includes what could be analyzed as a preemptive defense against criticism that it apparently did not incorporate broader input from the community about appropriate expectations of councilmembers:

For the purpose of this survey, the level of expectations and effort were defined by current Councilmembers themselves. This is reasonable based on: (1) it being the statutory responsibility of the Council to set the elected official salaries; and (2) the depth and diversity of experience, perspectives, and longevity among Councilmembers allowing for informed responses.

Statutory responsibility, constraints

The statutory responsibility to fix the salaries of elected officials, which is cited in the committee report, is spelled out in IC 36-4-7-2.

IC 36-4-7-2 Elected city officers; fixing of annual compensation; determining increases or decreases in compensation
…
(b) The city legislative body shall, by ordinance, fix the annual compensation of all elected city officers. An ordinance adopted under this subsection that fixes the annual compensation of an elected city officer shall provide for an annual, monthly, or biweekly salary schedule. An elected city officer is not required to report hours worked and may not be compensated based on the number of hours worked.
(c) The compensation of an elected city officer may not be changed in the year for which it is fixed nor may it be reduced below the amount fixed for the previous year.

It appears that this year is the first time that Bloomington’s city council has embraced the full extent of its authority under state law—by drafting the ordinance, as opposed to simply reviewing a proposal that the administration has put forward.

Because it’s set by an ordinance, the proposed compensation could be vetoed by the mayor. A vote on the ordinance setting the salaries for elected officials is expected at the council’s final meeting of the year, on Dec. 11.

Based on the timeframe for a potential veto, which is 10 days after enactment, any override by the council could come either just before Christmas Day, or between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Comparison to other municipalities, county government

The four-member committee decided explicitly not to consider comparisons to other municipalities or to Monroe County government as a basis for its recommendations. That decision was based on a “heat map” tool that was provided by consultants from Crowe LLP, who supported the committee’s work.

But a reference to other municipalities is included in a “reasonableness check” that is included in the framework that was adopted by the committee.

Contextual information for reasonableness check:
• Elected official salaries for Monroe County and other Indiana Second Class Cities
• Bloomington Area Median Income and Cost of Living

The US Census estimated the 2022 median household income for Bloomington to be $46,543, which  is about the amount of compensation that the committee recommended for councilmember.

Based on the 2025 salary ordinance that was enacted this year by the Monroe County council, the city council’s committee recommendation for city elected salaries would be significantly more than elected officials in county government. In the table below, at least the assessor, auditor, clerk, recorder, surveyor, and treasurer, are uncontroversially considered full-time positions.  The topic of the full-time versus part-time status of county commissioners would likely prompt debate.

Based on the 2024 salary survey conducted by AIM (Accelerate Indiana Municipalities), the recommended 2025 salaries for Bloomington city councilmembers would easily top the list for city councilmembers across the state. [One caveat is that not all cities responded to the survey, and the information is not verified by AIM.]

The committee’s recommended compensation for city clerk would solidify the compensation of Bloomington’s clerk near the top of the list of clerks in the AIM survey. The committee’s recommended compensation for Bloomington’s mayor would also rank near the top of the list of mayors in the AIM survey.

Council discussion prompting formation of the committee

The formation of the four-member salary committee grew out of a discussion that unfolded at the council’s Sept. 25, meeting, when the final budget proposal was presented to the council by the Thomson administration.

At the Sept. 25 meeting, Matt Flaherty foreshadowed the outcome of the committee’s recommendation on councilmember compensation, which was to make it a percentage of the mayor’s salary.

At the time, Flaherty rejected the idea of a cost-of-living increase for council salaries. Flaherty put it like this: “I think the approach to having a cost of living adjustment for what is a part-time salary also is probably the wrong framework.” He continued, “I think the idea of a percentage of the mayor’s salary makes more sense, because it accounts for the fact that it’s envisioned to be a part-time job, not a full-time job on council.” He added, “That addresses some of the systematic deflation of the council salary through cost of living adjustments over time.”

In his remarks, Flaherty said that it’s difficult to maintain a full-time job while serving the city council—especially if it’s a demanding one that doesn’t have a lot of flexible hours. If a councilmember is focusing on their council work, the compensation that they receive as an elected official winds up being the majority of their total income, Flaherty said.

At the time of Sept. 25 meeting, Sydney Zulich’s council salary was the only source of income for her. She said, “This is a very awkward conversation for me…as this is my current only source of income.”

Andy Ruff said at the same meeting that he would probably not be in support of any significant increase in salaries for elected officials except that they would take effect the year after the current councilmember term would end. Ruff added, “We all ran [for office] knowing exactly what the salaries were for the work, and for our term.”

The current four-year terms of all councilmembers conclude at the end of 2027.

At the Sept. 25 meeting, Isak Asare said he does not think that conversations about how much time councilmembers spend are appropriate. “We have to be very clear that that’s time that we choose to spend,” Asare said.

About the current level of councilmember compensation, Asare said, “I think the salary suggests that we should be focusing our time on being more efficient.”

While the cost of living in Bloomington is an important consideration, Asare said, “I think the other side of that consideration is what salaries are for the people that we represent. And realistically, a large proportion of our population is poor.”

Asare added, “I think that it’s a little interesting for us to sit here and say that we need more money and no point during the budget discussions have we talked about poverty alleviation—outside of speaking about very intense elements of that, like with street homelessness, particularly.”

Charts: Salary Grades, Mayor-Appointed Department Heads