Bloomington city council settles on $25K for its own pay, cost-of-living percentage for mayor, clerk

On Wednesday, at its final meeting of the year, Bloomington’s city council set next year’s salaries for the city’s elected officials.

Here’s how the numbers stacked up:

Mayor: $142,171
Clerk: $90,000
Council: $25,000

The ordinance with those numbers was approved on a 8–1 vote 7–1 vote. Dissenting was Isak Asare. Out of the room when the vote was taken was Matt Flaherty.

Those figures were a big decrease from the recommendations of a four-person committee, which were released the day before Thanksgiving. Serving on the committee were: Sydney Zulich, Matt Flaherty, Kate Rosenbarger, and Hopi Stosberg.

The committee had called for more than doubling councilmember salaries, from $21,153 to $45,423. Under the committee’s proposal, the clerk would have also received a big bump, from $87,000 to $129,780. Percentage-wise, the mayor would have received a more modest, but still significant increase, from $138,031 to $151,410.

Under state law, it’s the city council’s responsibility to set salaries for the city’s elected officials, including its own salaries.

Backlash from the public and the specter of a veto by Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson led on Wednesday night to two competing amendments to the ordinance that had been drafted by the committee.

The amendment that was adopted was put forward by Dave Rollo. Putting forward the other amendment were Matt Flaherty and Kate Rosenbarger.

At a special meeting of council held the day before, on Tuesday night, council president Isabel Piedmont-Smith had reported that Thomson had told her she would veto any ordinance that had any significant increases beyond the 3-percent COLA (cost-of-living) increase that city employees had received this year.

The dollar figures in the two proposals were close, even if Rollo’s amendment called for slightly lower amounts for clerk and council, and a slightly higher amount for the mayor.

In the vote on Flaherty and Rosenbarger’s amendment, both of the sponsors supported it, along with council president Isabel Piedmont-Smith and Hopi Stosberg. Voting against it were: Dave Rollo, Andy Ruff, Isak Asare, Sydney Zulich, and Courtney Daily.

For the mayor and clerk, Rollo’s proposed numbers reflected basically the same COLA (cost-of-living adjustment) increase that city of Bloomington employees received this year.

For councilmembers, Rollo looked to Fishers and Carmel as a standard of comparison. According to the 2024 salary survey conducted by AIM (Accelerate Indiana Municipalities), councilmembers in Carmel are paid $24,396 and in Fishers they’re paid $24,287.

Rollo’s amendment had two things going for it. One was an indication from Thomson that she would not veto it. The other was the lack of any accompanying schedule for a year-by-year increase of salaries to the levels recommended by the committee. Flaherty and Rosenbarger’s amendment provided a stepwise path to reaching the levels recommended by the committee by 2028.

Deputy mayor Gretchen Knapp, who attended Wednesday’s meeting, confirmed to The B Square that Thomson had indicated she would sign the ordinance, if amended with Rollo’s proposal.

But when asked by the council, Knapp said about Flaherty and Rosenbarger’s proposal: “The mayor has not seen this amendment. We discussed the other amendment, because I knew it was coming and knew the amounts, and she agreed to that, but we didn’t have a chance to discuss this one, so I don’t know what she would do.”

Asked by Rollo if he had any indication from Thomson that she would sign off on the proposal, Flaherty said that he did not.

Responding to Rollo, Flaherty first tackled the idea that the mayor might veto the proposal and that the veto might withstand an override, just based on the unavailability of councilmembers to meet before the end of the year.

Flaherty said: “I think personally, if six or more, or even just at the majority—but six or more, especially—members of council, voted in support of this ordinance with this amendment, and the mayor chose to veto, that’s pretty astounding, I suppose. But certainly something she can do.”

Flaherty continued, “And if on a technicality with respect to timing, that went through, those are the types of choices that we pay her $138,031 to make, you know. So I can’t control the mayor ultimately.”

Flaherty told Rollo that he had not tried to phone the mayor to inquire about her inclination to support his amendment. He put it like this “I’d welcome [the administration’s] views on this amendment, on the ordinance as a whole. I know they’ve shared them some, but no, I did not personally call the mayor this afternoon about this proposed amendment.”

For his part, Rollo said, “I found no trouble reaching the mayor’s office.”

Later in the meeting, Piedmont-Smith said, “I asked [the mayor] to call me today. I know she’s at a conference, and I did not hear from her.” Piedmont-Smith continued, “So I want to say that I’ve tried to collaborate with the mayor. It’s a two way street. I feel like she has not come her half of the way in this case.”

Asare, who was the lone dissenting voice asked: “How will raising our pay make us better at doing our jobs?” The first response came from Rosenbarger, who read at length from a Stanford Law Review article about  city council pay, including this passage:

A core aspect of democratic governance is that elected office is open to all citizens who satisfy the legal requirements for holding office. However, when compensation for elected officials is too low, the validity of that assumption—and the underlying democratic norms of equality and fairness—comes into question.

Although the precise effect of pay on an individual’s decision to run for—or remain in—legislative office is specific to each individual, political science scholarship, as well as anecdotal evidence from elected officials, tells us that pay can affect who decides to serve. While low pay may not be a barrier to those who have other sources of income—such as the retired or independently wealthy—low salaries for legislative positions can be a significant deterrent to public service for those who rely on their jobs for financial support.

Asare pressed for specifics from his colleagues: “Are you all saying, those who are proposing this position, that you will stop doing other things, if we raise salaries? And if so, what is it that you plan to stop doing so that you have more time to be on council?”

Piedmont-Smith responded by saying, “I don’t know if that’s an appropriate question. We’re talking about an amendment to salary. We’re not talking about individuals’ choices.”

Asare replied:

The reason why it is [an appropriate question] is because the argument is based on the idea that we would provide better service—the outcome. And so we have said that we want to move to an outcome-based budget. The outcome that’s called here is that we would provide better service, if we’re paid better.

And then the reasoning that was just provided is that if we’re paid better, we will be able to dedicate more time. …You can’t create time with money, and so you are stopping doing something else, if you’re saying that you’re going to get more time, because of money. So the question is: What are you going to stop doing, because suddenly you’re making more money? And if we can’t answer that question, then we can’t argue that we would be giving better service by taking more money from the public.

Ruff responded by saying, “If you are fairly paid for the 15, 20, 25, hours that it takes to do your work…you might be willing to sort of push harder than you might otherwise, when in any given situation, when you’re evaluating all the trade offs that are inherent to how we budget our time.”

Asare’s critical response to the committee’s recommendation, released late afternoon the day before Thanksgiving, had come in a Facebook post the same day.

On Wednesday, Piedmont-Smith rebuked Asare, by first praising the framework that the committee had developed.

She then said, “That framework kind of became irrelevant when one of my council colleagues posted online their outrage at the proposed ordinance and the increase for council members.” Piedmont-Smith continued, “So that became the public conversation, rather than any kind of logical, rational framework for actually thinking about our salaries. And that was not helpful. And I hope that that does not occur again.”

Piedmont-Smith then described her expectations for how councilmembers should react to the work of a committee: “If a council member feels strongly opposed to the outcome of work of their colleagues, I urge that council member to actually talk with the colleagues first and allow for some discussion and possible amendments, prior to spreading a certain public indignation and outrage—which came close to assuming bad intention on the part of the councilmembers of the committee.”

In his concluding remarks on the ordinance, Asare delivered some early political news: He’s not intending to run for re-election in 2027.

Asare said, “I recognize that the committee spent so much time working on [the elected official salary framework], and that’s wonderful. I don’t think that… just the fact that we spend a lot of time on something makes it above reproach.”

Asare addressed the idea that increasing salaries for councilmembers will allow other people to serve who might not be able to. “The [elected officials salary] framework revolves around the idea that other people will run. I wish that we would have had opportunities—outside of the ordinance being put in our [meeting information] packet to discuss that.”

Asare added, “I think that a lot of the principles that are put forward in the framework are not without their flaws,” but said the framework could be the starting point for discussing the fact that the idea is for people with a wider range of socio-economic backgrounds to run for council.

Asare, who is currently in the first year of his first four-year term, then delivered the news: “I’ve said very clearly multiple times that I have no intention of running again.” He followed up by inviting his colleagues also not to seek reelection. “That is something I invite all of you also to do, as we think forward, is: Let other people run.”