Having served on the city of Vancouver’s salary review commission at an earlier time when the economy called for no change, I don’t envy the current commission and the position in which it finds itself.
These type of commissions are utilized by cities around the state to review and make recommendations on salaries of mayors and council members. They do not consider staff salaries, nor are they tasked with an in-depth look at benefit packages, although there is some consideration of these as comparisons are made with other cities.
Vancouver has a city manager form of government. The elected mayor and council recruit and appoint a professional city manager. That manager then recruits and hires qualified staff for the various city departments and is the administrator of city operations.
The more that is paid in salary to the mayor and council, the more we tend to take away from the “volunteer service” nature of their work and begin to make them co-professionals almost on a parallel track with the appointed manager. In our form of city government, these elected officials should be thinking of their work as a community service, not a profession. They should not, however, be required to spend their own funds to serve and their payment should at least compensate for that possibility.
