Council Members May Give Themselves a Raise After Going Without

Hoping to boost their own paltry salaries to the level of Civic Arts Plaza theater ushers and student interns, City Council members on Tuesday may decide to give themselves a $261-a-month raise.

“I don’t think the public would quarrel with this raise,” said Councilwoman Elois Zeanah, who plans to vote in favor of the increase. After all, she said, being a council member is hardly a part-time job anymore.

If approved, the raise would take effect after the Nov. 5 election and would increase salaries to $1,026 a month, or $12,312 annually. A council member’s current pay is less than $10,000 before taxes.

Even Jere Robings, a frequent critic of government spending and taxation, said he has no problem with the raise.

“Frankly, I think the council members really do earn what they receive,” he said. “I don’t think that they’re running away with the city’s treasury. . . . I don’t think that the taxpayers are being abused.”

If anything, Robings said, council members are among the few city employees who are underpaid.

Lean financial times prompted council members to forgo the 5% raises allowed by state law for the last five years, Zeanah said. This year’s increase represents the sum of those missed raises.

“The salaries haven’t been raised in a long time,” said Councilman Mike Markey. “And it’s not a significant raise.”

City Council salaries are established by the California Government Code, said Greg A. Eckman, Thousand Oaks’ human resources manager. The base council salary for a city this size is $600 a month, which Thousand Oaks adopted in 1985.

“The closest [salary] we have for city employees is library pages and ushers,” Eckman said. “This is fairly low pay as far as city employees go. . . . It’s equivalent to working 50 hours a week at minimum wage.”

Some, Zeanah included, dispute that calculation, saying that council members don’t actually put in that many hours.

Fifty hours is closer to the minimum number of hours worked, Eckman said, if reading reports, meeting with constituents and attending council and committee meetings are tallied.

“Have you been at council meetings Tuesday nights?” he asked rhetorically. “There’s some variation from council member to council member . . . but I would be surprised if it’s less than that. That’s a pretty conservative estimate.”

Mayor Andy Fox concurred.

“I think council members serve not for the money, but we do spend tremendous numbers of time and hours per week in the course of meeting our duties,” he said. “I think the council is deserving of a nominal raise.”

The additional annual outlay of $15,660 for the five City Council salaries is a pittance in light of the city’s $67-million operating budget.

“I would imagine that it’s not going to bankrupt the city,” Eckman said.

Even after a raise, council members would earn less than one-tenth of the paycheck of City Manager Grant Brimhall, the city’s top breadwinner. Brimhall makes $10,764 monthly or $129,168 a year.