City Council in Provo sets vote on pay

PROVO — The Provo City Council is expected to vote Tuesday night on whether members of the council should get a 20 percent raise.

The proposal would increase the annual salary of council members from $9,576 to $12,000. The raise would still leave them slightly behind their peers in Murray and well behind city council members in Salt Lake City and West Valley City, the only Utah cities larger than Provo.

Council chairman George Stewart proposed the raise just two months into his term "I work for a trading company," Stewart said. "With the amount of time required on the council, I asked them to cut my compensation in half, which amounted to a $5,000 a month cut. That's neither here nor there in some ways, but as I looked at the council compensation compared to other cities, it was not balanced, especially in this form of government."

Provo is one of the few Utah cities to use a strong mayor form of government, and Stewart said council work has required 25 hours each week.

"You are a separate branch of government," Stewart said. "You don't rely on the city manager like other city councils, where the city manager really represents the council."

A public hearing will precede the vote on Tuesday, scheduled as the final item on the lengthy agenda for the 7 p.m. meeting.

The seven-member Provo council decided at a recent study session to move the item to Tuesday's agenda. The sole dissent regarding the idea came from Steve Turley.

"The arguments were that the more money we earn the more respect we'll have," Turley said. "I suggested then that we raise it significantly more so we get significantly more respect."

Stewart considered a larger raise, but while he offered to take the heat for any negative feedback — he said there hasn't been any yet — he didn't want to ask for too much.

Turley and others said they didn't think there was any compensation until they were elected.

"More compensation won't make any of us serve any harder, so in terms of the taxpayer getting more for their dollar, it just won't make a difference," Turley said.

Stewart also rejected Turley's suggestion to have another group, possibly Provo's own human resources department, study the issue and recommend a salary.

"If Steve had suggested it earlier, we might have done it," Stewart said. "But I looked at it as a slam dunk because smaller cities were paying more."