At the April 1 city council meeting, Southgate introduced an ordinance to make changes to an existing ordinance regarding the council and mayor’s salaries. Many council members were left concerned, one even taking to Facebook to inform community members, sparking community backlash.
Ordinance 26-03 was introduced to rewrite Ordinance 91-11, an ordinance that was originally written in 1991. During the first reading, City Attorney Mary Ann Stewart stated that the ordinance would “increase city council member pay from $2,019 per annum to $5,000 per annum” and would increase the mayor’s pay from “$4,897 per annum to $12,000 per annum.” The increases, if passed, wouldn’t become effective until January 2027.
The changes come from both the suggestion of the Department of Local Governments (DLG) as well as a survey of various council and mayor compensation in cities in Campbell County.
Despite the stated proposed changes in compensation, Stewart stated that her main concern was correcting the language of the ordinance. It originally stated that pay for the council and mayor would increase annually on March 1 of each year.
“I don’t think that the city has ever done that,” she stated at the April 1 meeting. “That’s good, because that really was inconsistent with KRS 83A.075.”
A few days after the ordinance was introduced, council member Mark Messmer made a post to a Southgate community Facebook page asking the community for feedback on the compensation increase.
Many community residents felt that an increase in pay was not something the council should approve of, some asking what the reasoning behind the increase was. Council member Tom Whitehead commented in response to those questioning the increase a photo of the findings of the survey of Campbell County cities.
Council member Elizabeth Hartman suggested scheduling a special meeting so residents could ask questions directly to the council and mayor. A meeting took place April 8 at the Southgate Community Center with a few residents in attendance. Here, Stewart as well as Mayor Hamberg clarified the ordinance and its need and answered questions from residents.
“The dollar figures that were thrown out were thrown out mainly because of them being the median,” Hamberg said about the compensation changes.
Many residents were also concerned about the timing of the ordinance.
According to Stewart, the calculation from DLG regarding the city governments’ compensations comes out around April.
“The statute requires that the ordinance be passed, as I said in the election year, and it has to be before the first Monday in May,” Stewart explained. “So, you have a short window.”
After discussion, many council members felt that the compensation did not need to be changed, some even suggesting lowering it.
“I would suggest leaving it as is and just changing the wording,” said council member Aileen Okura.
The city attorney took the recommendations from the special meeting and made changes to the ordinance for the second reading which took place April 15. In this reading, the compensation for both the council and the mayor stayed the same at around $2,000 for council and just under $5,000 for the mayor, but the wording was updated to meet the current standards.
Council voted unanimously to approve of the ordinance, keeping everyone’s compensation rates as they were. If the council does ever wish to make changes to the compensation, they would need to wait two years to change council’s and four years to change the mayor’s as changes can only be made during election years.
