Thomas Breen file photo
Charter Revision Commissioners: $5K could encourage more New Haveners to run for local legislative office.
Should alders receive their first pay raise in more than three decades — or is a $2,000 annual stipend enough to cover some of the costs of local legislators’ time-consuming and basically volunteer public-service jobs?
That question was at the center of Tuesday night’s Charter Revision Commission meeting.
The meeting, which took place in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall, marked the latest in the city’s once-a-decade process of considering changes to the city’s foundational governing document. The commission will meet multiple times per month until mid-May, when it plans to send a report to the Board of Alders to review and vote on. The alders will then finalize a question, or multiple questions, about alterations to the charter that will appear on voters’ ballots in November.
One of the topics that the mayor and the alders have charged the commission with considering is whether or not to increase alders’ annual stipends.
In particular, the commission is considering whether or not New Haven’s 30 alders should see their annual per-person stipends increase from $2,000 to $5,000 with an automatic cost-of-living increase.
If recommended by the commission and approved by voters, that would mark the first time since 1989 that alder pay has gone up. (The commission is also considering bumping up the Board of Alders president’s baseline annual compensation to $6,200.)
Laura Glesby file photo
Attorney Mednick: Local legislator pay is "all over the place" across CT.
On Tuesday night, commission-hired attorney Steve Mednick walked the charter revisers through that alder-pay issue along with a host of others, involving aldermanic representation on boards and commissions, the approval process for memoranda of agreement (MOAs), and if and how the city should create a new municipal traffic authority separate from the current police commission. (Watch a video recording of the full meeting below.)
The commissioners spoke favorably on Tuesday of bumping up compensation for each of the city’s 30 alders from $2,000 to $5,000 with a built-in cost-of-living increase.
“The amount is all over the place” when looking at how much alders and city councilors and other local legislators are paid, or not paid, across Connecticut, Mednick said.
Norwalk’s 15 Common Council members make only $600 a year. Bridgeport’s 20 City Council members make $9,000 a year each. Danbury’s 21 City Council members, meanwhile, aren’t paid at all.
Mednick said that the dollar amount for New Haven alders’ annual stipends is ultimately a “political judgment.” He encouraged the commission to recommend enshrining alder pay and an automatic escalator in the charter itself because changes to legislator salaries by state law is subject to referendum.
And having a referendum every time the city wants to bump up alder pay to keep pace with some kind of cost-of-living index could be “cumbersome.” If voters approve revising the charter this November and if included in that revision is a higher stipend and an automatic increase of some kind for alders, he said, that would mean that the city wouldn’t have to hold a referendum every time alder pay needed to be changed.
Just to be clear, what exactly would it mean to tie alder pay to “cost of living increases?” asked Commissioner Serena Neal-Sanjurjo.
That means “having some standard,” something from the Department of Labor or Bureau of Labor Statistics, that would be used to help calculate an automatic increase to alders’ pay. If the commission so chooses, he said, he could do some research and “come up with the proper standards” before finalizing such a recommendation.
He also said that alder pay increases can’t take place mid-term. Since the city’s fiscal year starts every July 1 and aldermanic terms (which are currently two years each, but which the commission is considering recommending bumping up to four) begin January 1, then the alder pay bump for, say, Jan. 1, 2024 must be in the budget for the year starting July 1, 2023.
Board of Alders Majority Leader Richard Furlow, who is also a member of the Charter Revision Commission, pointed out that, indeed, Mayor Justin Elicker has included $5,000 per-alder stipends in his proposed Fiscal Year 2023 – 24 (FY24) budget. “It’s a projection of what could be,” he said.
Just as a reminder, Commission Chair and City Clerk Michael Smart asked, why is this topic of increasing alder pay even before the commission?
Furlow said that alders’ annual pay of $2,000 first took effect in 1989. It hasn’t changed since.
Was that considered a cost of living amount for that time? asked the group.
Mednick, a former alder and city corporation council, and Charter Revision Commissioner Jack Keyes, a former town clerk and probate judge, said that even back in 1989, $2,000 wasn’t much.
“I think it was an attempt to show that there was some value to the service we were providing,” Mednick said. “And I think it was the lowest anyone thought we could get.”
Keyes said that the board thought at the time that this stipend “would go up over time.” But it never has. The rationale, he said, was that many of the alders spend money on tickets to community and political events, which “are part of the nature of the job. It became a burden on the pocketbook. It was never, and it’s not now, full compensation.”
“People don’t understand how much time alders do spend on the job,” Mednick continued.
Morris Cove Alder and Charter Revision Commissioner Sal DeCola agreed. He said that, in his 12 years as alder, he regularly gets asked by residents: “Why would you do this” — that is, taking constituent phone calls all the time and participating in late-night meetings at City Hall multiple times a month, among other aldermanic responsibilities — “for $2,000?”
“This compensation is really nothing,” he continued, “but it might open up the door for other people” who feel like they can’t currently afford to run for alder. As an alder, “you do have to go to events, you do have to have your suits cleaned, you do spend hours and hours” working for the public.
“This compensation is just to get the burden off other people that might want to run, because some people can’t afford this. It’s to open up the door, in my opinion, to give other residents of New Haven the chance to run, because maybe $5,000 would make it easier for them to have the position. There is a cost associated with this position.”
And what about the number of alders itself? The city currently has 30 alders for roughly 134,000 people, meaning each alder represents around 4,500 residents.
While the commission is not currently considering whether or not to recommend a change to the total number of alders on the board, DeCola weighed in on the matter anyway Tuesday night.
“I deal with almost 4,500 now. Imagine if I had to go to 10,000,” he said. “It’s a lot of conversations, a lot of emails. That’s why 30 is a good number.” If there were fewer alders charged with representing more people per ward, he said, that could take away from the “personal touch” alders are currently able to have with their constituents.
Watch Tuesday’s meeting in full above. See below for previous articles about this year’s Charter Revision Commission process.
• If It’s Good Enough For Hartford, Middletown
• Elicker Administration Pitches 4‑Year Terms
• Union Targets Mayor’s Ed Board Influence
• Ready. Set. Revise!
• 9 Approved For Charter Revision Commission
• Alders Establish Charter Revision Commission
• 4‑Year Terms Back Up For Debate
The BOA should be professionalized; trimmed to 10, paid a wage equivalent to a department administrator, and to protect against amateurish demagogues, the BOA should have a prompt and final process for ejection if an elected member proves unable to grasp legal and budget issues.