The Santa Monica City Council wants to know if it’s being underpaid and has asked staff to return to a future meeting with a study of compensation for councilmembers in neighboring cities.
Councilmembers Lana Negrete and Oscar de la Torre asked for the study at last week’s meeting saying the current base salary of about $17,000 didn’t provide enough compensation to account for the number of hours necessary to do the job, making Council an unattainable role for working-class individuals.
Payments to councilmembers varies wildly across the region and is further complicated by differing methods of payments (stipends vs. salaries), base payments versus other payments and other kinds of benefits. There are also differences between cities that expect councilmembers to be full-time vs. those that consider it a volunteer position.
According to State of California figures, councilmembers make about $6,000 a year in Culver City, $7,000 a year in Malibu, $10,000 in Beverly Hills, $60,000 in Inglewood and $220,000 in Los Angeles.
Negrete said a seat on Council was currently only accessible to people who have the luxury of time and money, freezing out potentially qualified candidates who need to work full-time to pay their bills.
"Obviously if you’re giving your time and you also rely on the income of your job, it can become totally unfeasible and blocking certain people from even considering a run for city council," she said. "So I think we have a lot of qualified individuals that could bring a lived perspective and experience to the council, but they wouldn’t even consider it because the compensation doesn’t really give you anything for the time that you would be giving in."
Councilmember de la Torre said it was important to consider bringing Santa Monica compensation up to par with the rest of the region, but reiterated no change could be made without the approval of voters.
"Ultimately, the voters will decide, so it’s not like, we’re deciding on our own," he said. "This is something that goes to the voters. And if the voters reject it and say, ‘Nope, you guys don’t get anything extra,’ then the voters spoke, and this is their decision."
Councilwoman Gleam Davis was the lone opponent to the idea of a study saying while she understood the motivation for the request, the City didn’t have enough money to fund vital services.
"And we just told people, we’re not going to pave our streets, and we’re not going to pave our alleys. And we’re going to let some of our facilities degrade," she said.
The request for the study followed the annual budget update and Davis said the state of the city’s infrastructure alone should preclude a pay raise for councilmembers.
"Going to the people of the city and asking them to pay us more is, I’ll just be honest, I just can’t imagine doing that," she said.
Mayor Brock supported the idea of a study, but said he had similar concerns.
"Because we are scrimping and saving and we just spent two hours just to ask for four more police officers in the city. We are in unprecedented times, the leanest probably the city has ever had to be since 1875," he said. "So I understand the request. I probably support the request but I’m not sure the optics of support in a year when we’re praying that we don’t get sued, praying that we don’t have more liabilities come to us, in praying that we can make our salaries and make everything else, not our salaries but the staff who work hard every day."
Staff are expected to return with the results of their study, focusing on comparable cities, in July.
matt@smdp.com
