Doubling salaries for mayor and City Council
OCEAN CITY – Ocean City Council introduced an ordinance at last Thursday evening’s meeting that would nearly double their pay and that of the mayor.
The ordinance was approved 6-0 on first reading with newly appointed Fourth Ward Councilman Dave Winslow abstaining. He was appointed at the meeting to replace Bobby Barr, who resigned his position after being named to the Cape May County Board of County Commissioners.
The mayor earns $20,600 and council members are paid $10,300, in an ordinance that set the salaries at the beginning of 2010. Salaries were raised to $20,000 and $10,000, respectively, at the start of 2006 after being set at $15,900 and $7,950 for 2005. There is an additional $1,000 stipend for council president and $500 for council vice president. The proposed ordinance does not include any stipends.
If approved on second reading at the Aug. 24 meeting, the new ordinance, No. 23-20, will raise the maximum base salary of the mayor to $40,000 and of council members to $20,000, effective Jan. 1, 2024.
In the future, annual increases would be tied to union contracts.
According to the ordinance, effective Jan. 1, 2025, and the first day of January of every subsequent year, the salaries shall increase by the same percentage as provided by collective bargaining agreements (“CBA”) between the city and city employees represented by the CWA, the Policemen’s Benevolent Association and the International Association of Firefighters. If those increases are not uniform across the board among the contracts, the increase in salary for mayor and council would “mirror the CBA with the lowest percentage increase.”
Ocean City Business Administrator George Savastano spoke in favor of the ordinance, in part mirroring what Mayor Jay Gillian and Council President Pete Madden told the Ocean City Sentinel last week. (See story online at ocnjsentinel.com.)
They pointed out that elected city officials are not compensated in line with that of other communities or in line with their responsibilities, which include overseeing a budget of nearly $100 million and a city government with 276 year-round employees and nearly four times that of part-time employees during the summer months.
The point of the annual increases tied to contracts, Madden said, is to not wait another 18 years – the time it took between the last raises and the proposed one – to take effect.
During public comment, resident Charles Deal said he agreed with increasing the pay of the mayor and council members, but not by 100 percent. He also said he was disappointed there wasn’t more transparency and that Savastano did not explain the math to support such a big jump in pay.
Deal said the raises should be based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which would have totaled 34 percent since 2010. He said the CPI increased 1.5 percent in 2010, as little as 0.7 percent in 2015 and as high as 7 percent in 2021. Based on those numbers, council would have been paid $13,380.98 in 2022.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
