Huntington Woods City Commissioners Paid With Coins

Huntington Woods City Commissioners received their pay for the past several years Tuesday night at in the form of $1 coins.

The playful payday came courtesy of Finance Director Tony Lehmann, who was reminded in a tongue-in-cheek memo from Commissioner Bob Paul that the group was due for compensation.

Commissioners in Huntington Woods are paid $1 per year to serve the city.

Lehmann provided each commissioner with a coin minted in the years they were due to be paid, which ranged from 2008 through 2011. The coins bore the likenesses of United States presidents Andrew Jackson, William Harrison, Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.

"You know what I say, don't you? Bob Ficano, eat your heart out," Commissioner Jules Olsman quipped.

after he acknowledged paying a $200,000 severance to former chief development officer Turkia Awada Mullin, who left the county voluntarily to run Detroit Metro Airport. Since the September revelation about Mullin's severance payment, a broader scandal has blossomed regarding spending under Ficano's administration.

"(The Huntington Woods commissioners) get a buck a year," Lehmann laughed after the City Commission meeting. "It's kind of ridiculous."

manager Claire Galed, who was at the meeting during which the $1 salary was put into effect, said the commissioners' pay rate has its roots in the Great Depression.

Before the national economic cataclysm that began in 1929 and lasted into the 1940s, Huntington Woods City Commissioners made $120 per year, "which was a lot of money for the time," Galed said. During the Depression, their pay was decreased to $60 annually, a figure that stayed in place until the 1980s, she said.

During a meeting in that decade, then-City Commissioner Gary Eisenberg recommended the body take up the pay issue, Galed said. Then-Commissioner Gordon Hassig – not knowing Eisenberg intended to seek an increase – agreed it was a great topic and suggested the commissioners work for nothing before Eisenberg had a chance to put forth a pay hike, according to Galed.

City Attorney Burton Shifman said Huntington Woods' charter required the commissioners to be paid, so the commission adopted the $1 salary.

"It was really funny," Galed said.

Plymouth-Canton Patch Editor John McKay contributed to this report.