Walking back Bloomington city council pay hike: ‘I no longer believe that this is the best use of our money’
Bloomington city councilmember Sydney Zulich said at Wednesday’s regular meeting, that she wanted to address the “elephant in the room”—which was the public backlash to a proposal to more than double councilmember pay in 2025, from about $21,000 to about $45,000 a year.
By “elephant” she could not have meant the emblem of the Republican Party, because the nine-member Bloomington city council is made up of all Democrats.
Also Democrats are the city’s mayor (Kerry Thomson) and elected city clerk (Nicole Bolden), which makes for a complete slate of Democrats for the city’s 11 elected officials.
Under the proposed ordinance, both the clerk and the mayor would also see big pay increases. For the clerk, the proposal is to raise the amount from $87,000 to about $129,000. For the mayor the proposal is from $138,000 to about $151,000.
But when Zulich, as chair of the four-member group that made the salary recommendations, gave the committee’s report, she indicated she no longer stands behind the proposed big increases.
She put the question in the context of national politics, starting with, “I think we’re in a really scary time. We have an incoming president who has promised to raise tariffs to the point that things are going to get very expensive for a lot of us.”
Zulich continued: “And after some reflection, I no longer believe that this is the best use of our money—in the face of what will most likely be pretty devastating to a lot of people.”
Zulich stressed that she was speaking for herself, not the other members of the committee. The other three councilmembers who served on the committee were: Matt Flaherty; Kate Rosenbarger; and Hopi Stosberg.
On Wednesday, beyond Zulich’s committee report, the topic of salaries for Bloomington’s elected officials did not get any discussion at the council table. That’s because of a quirk in Bloomington’s local code, that does not allow for discussion or amendment of an ordinance on the occasion of its first introduction.
Zulich said during Wednesday’s meeting that she and councilmember Courtney Daily would be working on an amendment to the proposed ordinance, for consideration at the council’s Dec. 11 meeting, when enactment of the salary ordinance is expected. Daily was absent from Wednesday’s meeting.
After the meeting, Zulich told The B Square that all city elected positions would be in play for her conversations with Daily to craft an amendment. Any amendment will likely also get discussion at a special meeting that the council has called for Tuesday (Dec. 10), starting at 7:30 p.m.
About the initial proposal and her intent now to revise it, Zulich told the Fox 59 news team that had made the trip down from Indianapolis on Wednesday: “I’m not embarrassed to say that, Hey, this maybe wasn’t the best choice…” She added, “It’s OK to get it wrong, especially… before it comes to a vote.” Zulich said there’s still “time to fix it.”
Asked by The B Square after Wednesday’s meeting, Zulich indicated it is her intent to stay within the framework developed by the committee, as she and Daily craft their amendment to the salary proposal.
One of the elements of the framework is that council salaries would be set at a percentage of the mayor’s salary, and that percentage would be determined “based on the number of hours required to meet expectations.”
The committee decided that a fair assessment of the number of hours (12 hours per week) translated into 30 percent of a 40-hour work week. The committee then applied 30 percent to $151,000 to arrive at the recommendation of about $45,000 a year for councilmembers.
How could the outcome be much different, if all elements of the framework are maintained?
Zulich responded to that question by calling it an “unfair assumption” that the mayor of Bloomington works only 40 hours a week. Taking a different number of hours as the mayor’s actual effort could lead to 12 hours as a smaller fraction of the mayor’s effort and a smaller salary for mayor, Zulich said.
According to the 1950 handwritten census records for Bloomington, then-mayor of Bloomington Thomas H. Lemon lived at 515 N. Park St. Lemon told the census taker who knocked on his door that year that the previous week he’d worked 72 hours as mayor.
A 12-hour council effort would work out to 16.66 percent of the mayor’s reported effort in 1950 , and when applied to $151,000, that works out to $25,166
The population that year was measured at 28,160 people, or about a third the size Bloomington is now.
Within the committee’s framework, a different path to around $25,000 a year could start with remarks by councilmember Isak Asare—made to Fox 59 before Wednesday’s meeting—which alluded to one of the elements of the framework.
The framework pegs council salaries to the mayor’s salary by pointing to the council as a “a coequal branch of government.”
Speaking to Fox 59’s Scarlett O’Hara, Asare said, “The reality is that the city council as a whole may be coequal to the mayor, but we are certainly not [coequal] as individuals.”
Asare himself did not make the following recommendation: If the proposed $151,000 for the mayor were considered to be for the whole council, and divided by 9, that pencils out to $16,777 a year. But it only takes six councilmembers to override a mayoral veto. Dividing $151,000 by 6 would put the council salary around $25,000 a year.
Within hours of last week’s release of the committee’s recommendation Asare made a statement on his Facebook page, with a full-throated denunciation of it, which he reprised to Fox 59 news.
Asare said, “I think it’s absurd that we would be raising our own salaries during the terms we’re serving.” He added, “And even if we do, I think that that should reflect the realities of the people that we serve and represent. And I don’t think that this [proposal] does that.”
Asare continued, pointing out that the proposed $45,000 for a councilmember is around the median income for a household in Bloomington. He called the proposal “tone deaf” saying that the proposal “doesn’t seem applicable in any way” to people and families who are struggling. Asare called it “an honor” to serve them. “Service is the foremost reason why we all got into politics in the first place.”
Asked by Fox 59 if he thinks the current council salary is fair, Asare replied, “I would have done this for free.” He added, “We’re here to help the community, and that’s why we run for office. At the end of the day, it’s service first.”
Monroe County Democratic Party chair David Henry responded to a B Square question on any partisan angle to the question by saying, “As a rule, the [MCDP] doesn’t make statements on policy development, and we don’t have a consensus among our committee on elected officials salaries.”
[Added Dec, 9, 2024. This morning, city council president Isabel Piedmont-Smith issued a two-and-a half-page statement to media about the proposed increase.]
