Full-time mayor’s salary set: $110,000
In contentious meeting, panel chooses figure below previously considered range but votes to review pay in ’19
After a raucous meeting that nearly ended in a fistfight, a divided city commission voted 4-3 Wednesday to set the base salary of the mayor at $110,000 a year when the position goes to full time in March 2018.
The volunteer Independent Salary Commission also voted to reconvene after the first year of the next mayor’s term “to consider and to review how things are progressing and whether any action needs to be taken with the mayor’s salary.”
The 6-1 vote to review the salary in a year opens the door for the commission, which had faced sharp criticism and even outrage after considering a significantly higher salary range of $145,000 to $175,000 a year, to increase the mayor’s pay in 2019. A ballot measure creating a full-time mayor’s position said the salary initially would be set at $74,000 until a commission could be created to determine how much the elected mayor should be paid. Many city residents believed the final pay would be closer to that figure.
Both of the commission’s votes Wednesday incited persistent heckling from members of the crowd. Several people continually interrupted the meeting, prompting the commission chairman, Paul Hultin, to repeatedly plead for civility and respect. At the first public hearing on the panel’s salary proposal a week ago, a number of people who spoke publicly made disparaging remarks against the commission and some of its members.
The hostility spilled into Wednesday’s meeting.
Former Santa Fe County Manager Roman Garcia told the commission he would be embarrassed if he were one of them.
“As a former Navy vet of 22 years, federal agent and county manager, I know corruption when I see it,” he said. “You should have some respect for yourselves and the citizens of this city.”
But another speaker, Fred Flatt, who is married to commission member Linda Wilder Flatt, said the group had a difficult task.
“I have come to defend this group because of truly uninformed and nasty people,” Fred Flatt said.
“We’re not nasty, and we’re informed!” community activist Gloria Mendoza said loudly from her seat in the front row of the City Council chamber.
“Gloria, you always talk up when you should be quiet,” Fred Flatt responded.
Another member of the crowd, Roger Rael, then shouted, “Remove him! Remove him!” After the meeting ended, he and Fred Flatt went nose-to-nose in a near physical confrontation.
Created under an ordinance that Mayor Javier Gonzales and the City Council approved last year, the commission was asked to set the salary of a fulltime mayor by comparing the salaries of other public executives within Santa Fe County, as well as the salaries of mayors “in cities of comparable size, cost of living and diversity within the region.”
Using a mayor-council form of government, also known as a strong-mayor government, as the main criteria for choosing cities of comparable size, the commission settled on a salary range of between $145,000 and $175,000 a year. One of the commission members, Shannon Lopez, objected to the range, saying it was too high, but she agreed to support it for the purpose of soliciting public input.
later discovered that some of the data the commission used to develop the salary range was flawed.
Lopez read from a prepared statement Wednesday, saying, “The primary feedback I received from members of the community and members of the business community is what enabled me to respectfully disagree on the salary range and propose that we put in place a more reasonable salary based on the objectives the mayor is tasked with as a public servant.”
The commission initially considered a $100,000-a-year base salary Wednesday, but the motion failed on a 4-2 vote, with Linda Wilder Flatt and Stephen Hochberg on the losing side.
When the commission considered the motion for a $110,000 annual base salary, Hultin broke the tie vote. Also voting in favor of the $110,000 salary were Shannon Moore Boniface, Andrew Wallerstein and Bill Smith. Voting in opposition were Wilder Flatt, Hochberg and Lopez, who had recommended that the base salary be set at $90,000.
Including pension and other benefits, the total compensation package for the mayor will cost taxpayers $154,000 annually under a $110,000-a-year base salary.
The commission, which has been wrongly accused of setting the salary specifically for Gonzales, who has yet to announce whether he will seek re-election, was envisioned in 2014 when 58 percent of voters approved a charter amendment that changed the position of mayor from part-time policymaker and ceremonial figurehead to full-time chief executive officer with the authority to fire the city manager, city attorney and city clerk.
Hochberg, who pushed for a $100,000 salary, said he took into consideration that some voters believed the salary would be $74,000 because of language in the ballot question.
“I do think that it was poorly worded,” he said, referring to the ballot question.
Former Mayor Larry Delgado, who attended Wednesday’s meeting but didn’t speak before the commission, agreed.
“First of all, I don’t think we need a full-time mayor in Santa Fe,” he said. “Second, I think there was some confusion when the ballot went out and $74,000 was said, and I think a lot of people voted [thinking] that’s what the salary was going to be.”
The new salary is already facing a legal challenge.
Before the hearing, Rael, the man who was almost involved in a physical altercation after the meeting, filed a motion for an “emergency injunction” to prevent action on the mayor’s salary.
Rael, who is representing himself, filed the motion with the New Mexico Supreme Court. Administrative Office of the Courts spokesman Barry Massey confirmed that the case had been filed and submitted to the court, which faces no deadline to take action.
Rael requested the injunction “due to multiple conflicts of interest,” including cash contributions from Hultin and Wallerstein to the campaign in support of a full-time mayor in 2014. Hultin, who also served as the campaign’s legal counsel, contributed $1,000 to the effort, and Wallerstein contributed $1,500.
City spokesman Matt Ross declined to comment about Rael’s motion.
“The city is unable to comment on active or pending litigation,” he said.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Yvonne Chicoine, who chairs the Santa Fe County Republican Party and ran unsuccessfully for district attorney, raised a different legal argument, saying the commission does not yet have the authority to set the mayor’s salary.
The charter language giving the mayor the authority to appoint a salary commission does not change until March 12, 2018, she said, adding that she believes “this commission is not legally constituted.”