Markeshia Ricks Photo
No-voting Alders Roth (pictured above) and Winter (below) at Tuesday’s alder meeting.
Mayor Toni Harp will get a raise, but not as big a raise as her administration requested.
During their bi-monthly meeting at City Hall Tuesday, city alders voted 25 to 2 to raise Harp’s annual salary from $131,000 to $134,013 effective Jan. 1 through June 30, 2019.
The increase represents the mayor’s current salary plus a 2.3 percent cost of living adjustment based on the annual Consumer Price Index for urban wage earners, or CPI‑W, as determined by the U.S.Department of Labor Bureau of Statistics in November 2017.
For the period of July 1, 2019, through June 30, 2020, the mayor would receive another cost of living adjustment raise that would be the new $134,013 salary plus the percentage increase, once again, tied to the CPI‑W.
Harp had originally requested a $10,000 raise, to $141,000. With that raise, she still would have made less than the mayors of Bridgeport, Hartford, and Stamford, which pays the highest salary — $173,000 — of the bunch.
Aldes put forth a compromise solution Tuesday evening after members of the Finance Committee forwarded Harp’s request without a recommendation, leaving it to the full board to make a decision. But alders held off on a vote earlier this month as they awaited more information from the administration.
Hill Alder Dave Reyes said that members of the Finance Committee received a lot of phone calls from constituents about the mayor’s request and decided to go back to the drawing board to achieve a compromise solution, given that the salary had not been raised in a decade. The majority of alders felt more comfortable with a cost of living adjustment than a flat-out $10,000 hike.
“This is only for her term that she’s in now,” he said. “Any further increases would have to come back to us.”
Not all of the alders were comfortable with any increase given expected financial troubles ahead for the city and the state.
Downtown Alder Abby Roth said that in a perfect world she’d be happy to support a salary increase. But in the face of the state’s ongoing deficits, unfunded retirement liabilities and the fact that New Haveners just received a higher tax bill for their vehicles, she couldn’t support an increase for the mayor.
“As the mayor said in her thoughtful inaugural address, New Haven faces extremely serious financial challenges,” she said. “I believe it is critical that leadership demonstrates shared financial sacrifice.”
Roth pointed out that Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin recently turned down a $20,000 increase in his salary and that in San Diego, a city of 1.4 million residents, the mayor receives a salary of $101,000.
Like Roth, Newhallville/Prospect Hill Alder Steve Winter said he generally supports pay increases for “hardworking civil servants,” but the mayor’s own words at her inauguration about the “storm clouds” facing the city in the form of reduced state aid convinced him to oppose a pay raise for her.
“Many residents in my ward do not feel now is the time for salary increases, and I share those concerns,” he said.
Festa: leaning toward a no vote until the compromise.
Tuesday’s vote could have had at least one more no vote if not for the compromise, from East Rock Alder Anna Festa. Festa said she was comfortable with the compromise because it addressed the fact that the mayor’s salary had not been raised in a decade.
She said the original $10,000 request appeared to her an arbitrary number not based on anything. She said she also felt like the debate about the salary had turned personal in nature instead of focusing on the position of mayor.
“A cost of living adjustment is something that makes more sense to me,” she said.
Click on the Facebook Live video to watch the debate and vote Tuesday nigiht.
I'm glad that my tax hike - money from my family - will be used in part to give the mayor who makes four times more than the average New Havener - a pay raise. Perhaps the extra money will give her incentive to solve the city's deficit budget.