Ventura City Councilman Suggests Restoring Stipend

Complaining that he is underpaid for the work he does, Ventura City Councilman Jim Monahan says the city should consider sending council members a check each time they convene under the title of Redevelopment Agency.

That happens about once or twice a month at regularly scheduled council meetings and can last two minutes to two hours, depending on the issue at hand. Nobody leaves the room. Nobody changes seats.

Every city in Ventura County, except Camarillo, has a redevelopment agency--a legal change of name that allows the council to spend tax dollars set aside for property it has declared in need of rehabilitation.

Monahan proposes that each time the council convenes under the agency title, he and the other council members could get paid an extra stipend, perhaps $25 a session--a bill that could mean an extra $750 per council member per year.

“I would like to think, for the amount of time we put in, it’s only fair,” he said. “It’s another entity. We wear two hats.”

The stipend would come on top of the council’s regular salary. The mayor now receives $8,400 a year, and Monahan and the other council members get paid $7,200 a year to perform their duties.

If the council members apply to receive their monthly expense accounts, which officials say most do regularly, their salaries rise even higher--$12,000 a year for the mayor and $9,600 a year for the rest of the council.

Councilman Gregory L. Carson, who chairs Ventura’s Redevelopment Agency, said he found Monahan’s stipend idea interesting. “I’m going to wait and see what Jim comes up with,” he said. “It is a financial hardship to be a City Council member.”

Other council members, however, immediately blasted the proposal, saying they did not go into public service to get rich.

“This is not about money--it’s about community service,” said Councilman Gary Tuttle. “Do I find (Monahan) hypocritical? Yes, absolutely. . . . He thinks government is over-big, over-fat. But he’s the first one in line for a pay increase.”

Monahan, who presented the idea at 11 p.m. Monday, just as the council was ending its weekly meeting, said he is merely trying to restore a practice dropped in the late 1970s, when he served his first council term. Back then, each council member received $25 every time the council met as the Redevelopment Agency.

The city clerk, Barbara Kam, who also worked for the city in the 1970s, said she does not know why the council voted to stop paying that stipend. But as Monahan recalls it, the funds were slashed as part of a municipal money panic following the passage of Proposition 13, the taxpayer initiative that severely restricted the amount of property taxes the city received.

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“But since that time, the city has allowed its staff and their salaries to grow,” Monahan said. “But we never restored the amount that the redevelopment agencies received. It should’ve probably been restored, and it was an oversight.”

The stipend proposal, however, comes 17 months after the council slashed the city budget, freezing some positions and eliminating others in an attempt to save money.

Even as Monahan outlined his plans for a new stipend, which he says would come out of agency funds, not general revenue, he also called for more funds for the Police Department. He said that since the city would be hard pressed to pay for more officers out of the main budget, it should consider reaching into city reserves to find the extra money.

If Ventura did revive the agency stipend, it would not be alone. Of the county’s three other large cities--Thousand Oaks, Oxnard and Simi Valley--only Thousand Oaks does not pay its council members extra cash for each time they convene as the Redevelopment Agency.

In Oxnard, for example, council members receive $10,800 a year, including expenses, and the mayor receives $12,000 a year, including expenses. In addition, each time the council meets as the Redevelopment Agency and each time it meets as the Housing Authority, council members take home $30 extra per meeting. Both the authority and the agency generally meet each week, at the same time the council does, city officials say.

If the Oxnard City Council met 45 weeks a year, that would increase each council member’s annual salary by $2,400.

But many council members in Ventura said the idea is not for them.

“No. Just flat no,” said Councilman Jack Tingstrom. “I’ve never seen it, I don’t need it, I don’t want it. It’s too controversial.”

He said he had no idea why Monahan proposed renewing the stipend now.

“Jim’s Jim,” he said. “He has a mind of his own and half the time, I have no idea where he’s coming from.”