Ballot Measure Seeks 1st Council Pay Hike : Elections: Charter Amendment R would boost salary from $50 to $600. Supporters say it is long overdue. Opponents fear it would create full-time politicians.

The buck stopped for Santa Monica City Council members in 1946.

Harry Truman was President, and the $50 monthly salary the City Charter awarded council members was nothing to sneeze at.

But eight Presidents and nearly half a century later, the council hopes to persuade voters to kiss the good old days goodby and approve a hefty raise.

“The amount of money we are getting is silly,” retiring Councilman Herb Katz said.

Charter Amendment R on the November ballot would increase council salaries to $600 a month, plus full health benefits. It also provides for an annual cost-of-living raise of up to 5%.

The increased cost of the package is estimated at $77,800 for the first year in which council members would earn $7,200 instead of the current $600. Council members already receive a car phone, a fax machine and a travel allowance. Each of them is also is paid about $500 a year for duties as members of housing, redevelopment and parking authorities.

“Given what is demanded, the pay we’re seeking is modest,” said Chris Harding, an attorney who served on the council-appointed Charter Review Commission that proposed the increase. “If they had simply adjusted for inflation, it would be in the range we’re recommending now.”

Opponents of the measure argue that increasing the salary and adding benefits could move Santa Monica toward a Los-Angeles type council made up of full-time politicians, not citizen volunteers.

“I don’t want this to be a job for people,” Donna Alvarez said. “Then they become a professional politician. People should do this because they want to do it for the city.”

The proposed pay raise would be quite a boost for some current Santa Monica City Council members because four of them, all from the renters’ rights majority, either don’t have outside employment or work part time.

They get by by having rent-controlled apartments, working spouses, family money and, in one case, taking in boarders.

“I personally decided to be underemployed to devote time to this,” Mayor Ken Genser said. “You gotta put in the time to do the job right.”

A survey of past and current council members shows they work 15 to 40 hours a week on city business, averaging 23 hours.

Statements of economic interest on file with the city clerk reveal that Genser has done a bit of consulting since he was laid off a few years ago by his former employer, American Youth Hostels. But for the most part, he said, he has lived off savings, including stock he liquidated, and $1,200 in fees earned for administering the family trust of which he is a beneficiary. The trust owns property in Santa Monica. Genser lives in a rent-controlled apartment, as do Councilmen Dennis Zane and Kelly Olsen.

Olsen was a writer, film production worker and taxicab driver before being elected two years ago. Since then, however, his financial disclosure statement shows that he has earned no salary, relying on his wife’s income as manager of a legal office.

“If it wasn’t for my wife, I wouldn’t be able to do this,” Olsen said. “She subsidizes the city.” Olsen said he was willing to do the job for pocket change because he views it as a calling. “Why does anyone become a nun or a priest or go into the Peace Corps?” he asked.

Zane is retiring from the council in part because of the need to earn a living. Since quitting his math teaching job four years ago, Zane has been partially supported by his wife. Zane’s disclosure forms list intermittent consulting contracts in the last two years. For example, Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights is paying him $5,000 to run the coalition’s election efforts.

Mayor Pro Tem Judy Abdo cobbles together a living with a morning job as administrator at the Church at Ocean Park and works 15 hours a week as a bookkeeper for the Peter Norton family foundation. She also rents out rooms in the Ocean Park home she owns.

Of the council members elected on the SMRR slate, only Tony Vazquez has a full-time day job. He works with United Way.

Both non-SMRR council members work full time. Katz is an architect and Robert T. Holbrook is a pharmacy professor at USC.

All council members support Charter Amendment R, which pairs the pay raise with a proposal to limit members to three consecutive terms or 12 years.

The $600 a month is comparable to similarly sized Southern California cities such as Burbank. The Westside cities of Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and Culver City pay council members $330, $400 and $430 a month respectively.

Although there is no major campaign against the raise, it could face tough opposition in a year of recession and anti-government sentiment. “The timing is a little rough,” Holbrook said.

A similar effort to raise council pay to $600 a month in 1988 failed by 681 votes.

At least half of the 18 candidates hoping to be elected to four seats on the City Council next month oppose the raise, mostly because it seems imprudent in a budget-cutting year.

Noting that all 18 are willing to work for $50 a month, candidate George Hickey said, “The supply exceeds the demand.”

Several candidates argued against the raise, saying they are not so sure it is good policy to encourage council members to be so involved in the day-to-day running of the city, when that is the job of the city manager and staff.

“They don’t work,” said candidate Tom Pyne, a hospital administrator. “They have time to spend hours at City Hall plotting and scheming and interfering.”

Candidate Asha Greenberg, a Los Angeles prosecutor, said the raise is essentially a jobs program for unemployed incumbents.

But Harding, who wrote the ballot argument in favor of the pay raise, said he hopes that voters do not approach the measure as a referendum on the current council.

“I approach this philosophically in terms of the workload and the desire to have a pay level that will not deter capable people from serving,” Harding said.