Challenge Looms Over Timing of Mayoral Salary Decision

A number of aldermen say they will try Tuesday night to put on hold a decision on whether or not to raise the beginning with the next term starting in April.

The challenge is not so much because of the merit or lack of merit in the proposal but because of its timing. At issue is whether increasing the mayor's salary ought to debated at all during the roughly one-month nomination period for candidacy for the office.

Ald. Bobby Pantuso and Jeff Roznowski said they, along with others, would make or support a move to hold the item over until after the nomination period closes on Jan. 3. The window for collecting nomination signatures opened Thursday.

Depending on how you look at it, a proposal to raise the salary of the mayor of Wauwatosa from $22,500 to $30,000 is either:

• a huge one-time percentage increase — 33 percent — for any elected official during difficult financial times; or
• a long-overdue and not-that-large pay bump to move the mayor's salary upward toward some kind of equity with the demands of the job.

That, and the parallel question of whether the mayor's job is full-time or part-time, has been debated on and off for close to two years by the Wauwatosa Common Council, and the same proposed increase was defeated when it came to a vote in July.

The proposal comes back to the council Tuesday night with full support this time from the committee of aldermen charged with close debate of the matter and with making a recommendation for adoption.

While unanimous recommendations from council committees are heeded most of the time, Pantuso and Roznowski said that considering a raise now could give the appearance that some candidates might be making a decision to run or not based on the position's salary.

"Frankly, I do believe the mayor is overdue for a raise," Pantuso said. "I just don't think this the right time at all to discuss it. I think it's divisive and it looks bad. I think it's bad governance.

"We can easily hold this over into January so there isn't any question of motives."

Roznowski went even further. "If someone is or even might be deciding (whether to run) based on the salary, I don't want them to be our mayor," he said. "Anyone's decision to run for office ought to be about the spirit of public service.

"The idea of discussing this in December is inappropriate. Why do we even talk about it?"

Roznowski also does not buy into the reasoning for a raise, even regardless of the timing.

"From Day One, I've been opposed to it," he said. "The salary for a suburban municipality that has a highly compensated city administrator is right where it ought to be.

"We did a study of how mayors and administrators are compensated in other municipalities, and Wauwatosa fell right in the middle."

Donegan ready to face the music

Suddenly in the middle of the fray is Ald. Peter Donegan, who has pushed for the raise since it came to the Employee Relations Committee, which he chairs, in June. After it failed before the full council on July 5 on a 7-6 vote, Donegan brought it back in front of the Budget Committee in September, and now yet again from Employee Relations.

Donegan that he will run for mayor, and he said he was acutely aware that his championing of the raise would confront him immediately.

"I was thinking hard about it at 2 a.m." even as he was making his mind up to run, Donegan said Monday. "And I will say (Tuesday night) what I have to say, out in the open. I have backed this raise for a long time, and I'm not going to back away.

"It is tradition for the chairman of the committee to move the proposal, and I will so move it."

Donegan said that other than in pondering and accepting any heat he might take for the move while he is himself a candidate, he has no personal interest in wanting a raise in order to serve.

"It is long overdue, and I do this out of a sense of fairness to the office, whoever may hold it," he said. "I believe the constituency of Wauwatosa has been heard and agrees it is fair and overdue."

The salary of $22,500 for the mayor was set in 1984. The city administration has estimated that over 28 years, accounting for inflation and cost-of-living increases, a typical salary at that level would by now have risen to between $51,000 and $53,000 a year.

On the other side of that equation, though, is the argument that with a full-time city administrator charged with making executive level decisions, the mayor's job should be considered part-time and excepted from inflationary increases.

Other candidates dismiss any personal interest

The other two mayoral candidates have both said that the salary level was no consideration for them in running. John Pokrandt declared his intentions two months ago and that, if elected, he would accept the salary on the table and devote to the office all the time and energy it deserves.

"Nobody takes on the enterprise for the money," he said.

Jim Moldenhauer, who , likewise said he was seeking the office to serve Wauwatosa's constituency and that, while he felt that constituency did support an increase, it played no part in his decision to run.

"I would say that from a constituent perspective, I believe it is too low," he said Monday. "There's a general consensus.

"I'm indifferent because I'm going to run for the office regardless. As it applies to me, it's not important. That's what the pay is — $22,500 — and that's what I'm running on."