Yorba Linda : Council Votes to Raise Salaries to $400 a Month

City Council members have been getting the same salary--$150 a month--for 20 years. But they made up for that Monday night with a 4-1 vote to raise salaries to $400, come December, 1988, after the new council takes office. The action awaits a final confirmation vote at the next council meeting.

“This is the first time that the council has increased its salary in the 20-year period the city has been in existence,” Assistant City Manager Bruce Channing said Tuesday.

Councilman Henry W. Wedaa dissented from the council majority and voted against the pay hike.

“We’re not forced to do the job. We all do it voluntarily,” Wedaa said Tuesday. “A lot of other people in the city are volunteers. They don’t get paid at all.”

“No one made us run for this $150-a-month job. We knew what the salary was when we ran for it,” he added.

Wedaa also was the only council member to object to changing the day the council meets from the first and third Monday of each month to the first and third Tuesday.

Wedaa said that the meeting date was set 20 years ago and that local groups often have arranged their schedules around it so they can attend council meetings.

The new meeting date--pending final approval--would be changed for several reasons, Wedaa said, one of which was that “Monday Night Football is on Monday nights.”