Salary Raised to $400 a Month : Corona Councilmen Double Their Pay

Most of the City Council left town Wednesday after an unusual Tuesday night meeting at which members voted to double their salaries.

The mass departure had nothing to do with the vote to raise the monthly stipend from $200 to $400, City Manager Jim Wheaton said.

The council met Tuesday--instead of holding its usual Wednesday session--because Wheaton and three council members were planning to attend a city management conference in Monterey.

Wheaton, Mayor Pro-Tem S.R. (Al) Lopez and Councilmen Dick Deininger and Gary Miller left Wednesday morning for a League of California Cities institute being held for mayors and city council members, Deputy City Manager Bill Garrett said.

Marine Reservist

Councilman William Franklin was scheduled to head for Quantico, Va., to serve a summer hitch in the Marine Corps reserve, Garrett said.

Mayor Bill Miller was the only council member who remained in the city Wednesday. “We’re hoping it will be a quiet week here in Corona,” Garrett said.

The council’s pay increase, which will take effect Aug. 16, was passed on a 4-0 vote, with Gary Miller absent. He had voted in favor of the measure at its first reading earlier this month, Garrett noted.

Firefighters Get Hike

The council also approved a 15% pay hike for Corona’s firefighters. Their new two-year contract calls for the increase to be retroactive to July 6, when the old contract expired, and for another pay hike to be implemented Aug. 15, 1986, based on the salaries of firefighters in comparable cities, Garrett said.

The terms of the new contract, already ratified by the firefighters, do not include increased death benefits for firefighters’ widows and children, Garrett said. Instead, the two sides agreed to continue studying the firefighters’ proposal for possible implementation in the second year of the contract.