April 2018 | Vol. 18 Iss. 04
SANDY
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UNDERSTANDING ELECTED OFFICIAL COMPENSATION in the wake of pay raise controversy By Justin Adams | j.adams@mycityjournals.com
The salaries of most of the mayors within Salt Lake County. There is a clear distinction in pay between mayors in cities with a council-manager form of government and mayors in cities with a council-mayor form of government.
“A
witch hunt.” “A failure on many levels.” “An unfortunate situation.” Those are the terms used to describe a controversy that came to a conclusion at a Sandy City Council meeting on Feb. 27. A few weeks prior, KUTV reported that Sandy’s recently-elected mayor, Kurt Bradburn, had given himself a $15,000 raise during his first month in office. The news resulted in a firestorm of social media backlash—KUTV’s post on Facebook garnered 72 (mostly) angry comments—resulting in an announcement by Bradburn that he would take a pay cut instead. The city of Sandy appeared ready to move past the controversy at the Feb. 27 council meeting. Most of the residents who spoke as well as the city council expressed continued trust in the mayor. The city council also passed
a resolution that codified mayoral compensation, meaning that the Sandy mayor will no longer be responsible for setting his or her own salary. The resolution also included an increased commitment to transparency. As suggested by Councilman Zach Robinson, the city will begin disclosing both the mayor’s and the city councilors’ salaries in the city’s budget. “If we’re going to publish the mayoral ranges, I’d recommend that we publish the council ranges as well. I feel that would be an open and transparent communication from us to our citizens,” said Robinson. Part of the reason for the public outcry about the mayor’s self-appointed raise is a lack of public understanding about how local elected officials are compensated. In response to a query on social media concerning this subject, respondents who live along the Wasatch Front said by and large that they weren’t quite sure how much their mayor was paid, but guessed anywhere in a range from $10,000 to $50,000. While some mayors’ paychecks do fall within this range, there are many others who are paid two or three times that amount. According to the report by KUTV, Bradburn’s initial salary when he took office was $147,000, meaning the raise would have brought him up to $162,000. That would have been more than double the median household income of Sandy ($76,807) as well as the highest salary of any mayor in the valley, including Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski. The resolution passed by the Sandy City Council set a minimum mayoral salary of $119,000 and a maximum of $144,000. Those figures were recommended to the council by Mike Applegarth, the council office’s director, who said that the mayor’s compensation should be based on “similarly situated cities” such as Provo or Ogden. In 2017, the mayors of those cities received salaries of $109,500 and $128,699 respectively, according to information from the
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state of Utah’s public finance factory seconds blowout! website, transparent. utah.gov. W h i l e the mayor’s new salary of only $119,000 is more on par $ with some of the larger 50 count box! or 3 cities along for the Wasatch American Heritage School $ Front, it is 11100 S. Redwood Rd., S. Jordan still near the Saturday, April 14 • 8:30AM -3PM top of what a municipal mayor can make in the state of Utah. Of the 15 cities considered for this article (13 Salt Lake County municipalities plus Ogden and Provo) there is a wide range in the amount of money that a mayor is paid. In fact, Salt Lake City Mayor Biskupski made almost 10 times as much money in 2017 ($149,220) as the lowest-paid mayor last year, former Riverton Mayor William Applegarth ($15,521). Of course, Salt Lake City and Riverton are two completely different cities in a variety of ways. First, Salt Lake City has more than four times the number of residents as Riverton. Secondly, one city’s budget is much larger than the others. Last year, the city of Riverton’s expenses totaled about $30 million, according to the city’s 2017 financial report. Salt Lake City meanwhile, had a budget of over a billion dollars. But the most critical difference between the two cities, at least when it comes to determining mayoral compensation, is form of government.
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