Members of the Logan Municipal Council are considering approval of Ordinance 23-17, a proposal that would grant city elected officials a 4 percent compensation increase effective July 1.
LOGAN – The annual thorny issue of compensation for city elected officials came up again during the regular meeting of the Logan Municipal Council on June 6.
In a workshop item at that meeting, Human Resource Director Ambrie Darley recommended that elected officials – the mayor and council members – receive a 4 percent increase in their annual compensation for the fiscal year starting July 1.
Other city employees will receive the same 4 percent increase, she explained.
As usual, council member Tom Jensen complained that he and his colleagues on the council were dealing with the “awkward thing” of voting themselves a pay hike.
Council member Jeannie Simmonds asked if the proposed ordinance could be split, allowing the council to approve a pay raise for the mayor and city employees while excepting themselves.
Council member Amy Z. Anderson suggested that the solution to Jensen’s “awkward thing” was simply to donate to amount of the pay increased back to the city for needed projects.
Anderson said she had resorted to that strategy in 2022, when the council approved a whooping 11 percent pay raise for elected officials.
Darley defended the proposed pay increase, citing statistics from a 2022 pay study of similar-sized cities within Utah.
That study found that the city manager of Spanish Fork – whose duties approximate those of Logan’s mayor — was paid more than $207,000.
The mayor and city managers of Murray – both of whom are full-time employees – are each paid more than $130,000, for a combined total of $260,000, Darley added.
The compensation gap between Logan officials and those of other Utah communities, according to Darley, resulted from local officials denying themselves pay raises for a decade following the collapse of the housing market in 2008.
“We propose that you accept this 4 percent increase because we want compensation levels to be attractive to qualified candidates (for elective office) down the road,” she added.
As specified by the proposed city Ordinance 23-17, Mayor Holly Daines will be paid an annual salary of $118,270.29 and a $6,000 vehicle allowance starting July 1.
Her previous salary was $113,721, up from $102,452, thanks to the 11 percent pay increase approved by members of the municipal council in June 2022.
Daines said that she had donated the full amount of the “last couple” of pay raises back to city projects and would be happy to do so again.
The proposed ordinance would set council members’ annual compensation at $18, 555.76 plus a $300 vehicle allowance, up from $17,842.
The council members thanked Darley and the members of the city’s Compensation Committee for their hard work, but declined to take any action on Ordinance 23-17 until after a public hearing on the proposal likely to be scheduled later in June.