Raise pay, expand terms for council

City Council salaries account for only about 0.03% of San Antonio’s general fund budget, but the issue of council pay carries heavy political baggage. Voters inevitably question what they’re getting for their money. Some suggest that with San Antonio’s council-manager form of government — which places executive responsibilities on a city manager rather than a mayor — serving on City Council is not a full-time job and doesn’t merit full-time pay.

That debate played out in 2015, when voters approved a charter amendment that raised the annual pay for council members from $1,040 to $45,722 and the mayor’s pay from $4,040 to $61,725.

The move was overdue but insufficient. The salary levels should have been higher and indexed to keep up with increases in median income levels and the cost of living.

But getting any kind of council pay amendment passed in 2015 was difficult, and the city’s Charter Review Commission probably pushed about as far as voters were willing to go at that time. As it was, the amendment passed with only 54.8% of the vote.

Nine years later, we’re again looking at municipal government compensation, with a new Charter Review Commission putting together recommendations that council members likely will approve to put on the November election ballot.

Because we can’t divorce this issue from the reality of what voters will be willing to accept in November, we think the sweet spot for council pay is on the low end of the Charter Review Commission subcommittee’s preliminary recommendation of between $75,000 and $125,000.

For example, if we went with 125% of San Antonio’s single-individual median income, that would put council pay at about $77,000. Let’s say we set the mayor’s pay at 140% of the median income. That would give the mayor approximately $86,000.

There are different ways of approaching this. The charter amendment on council pay can be indexed by using a percentage of director-level city employee salaries, as a Charter Review Commission subcommittee has suggested.

The important point is that salaries should be indexed to something so we don’t have to revisit this issue every few years.

We also suggest that council terms be stretched from two to four years. This would allow council members to settle into their jobs without feeling the instant pressure to fundraise and start planning their reelection campaigns.

The question for the Charter Review Commission is whether those four-year terms should be staggered or concurrent.

We think the concurrent approach

makes the most sense, because it will save money by reducing the number of municipal elections in San Antonio. It also will prevent the kind of wild turnout fluctuations that would happen if the mayoral election is no longer held at the same time as all the individual council races.

The most urgent issue facing the Charter Review Commission is the question of what to do about the pay and tenure of the city manager.

Thanks to the 2018 San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association’s crusade to get vengeance against its collective-bargaining nemesis, then-City Manager Sheryl Sculley, San Antonio is saddled with a charter amendment restricting the pay and tenure of the city manager.

That means current

City Manager Erik Walsh is limited to eight years in office and compensation capped at 10 times the salary of the city’s lowest-paid full-time employee. The tenure limit means Walsh would be forced out of office in three years. And both the tenure limit and pay limits mean that recruiting an eventual successor for him would be challenging.

The obvious answer is to return to where we were before the 2018 election by reinstating the City Council’s power to decide how much they want to pay a city manager and how long they want that city manager to serve.

One of the charges from Mayor Ron Nirenberg when he reconstituted the Charter Review Commission last November was to explore the idea of expanding the number of council districts in San Antonio.

It’s a worthy idea. In 1977, when San Antonio adopted single-member council districts, the average district had a population of 65,000. Today, the average district population is more than 143,000. That has raised the fair question as to whether council members can adequately provide constituent services.

But adding council districts would mean going through the fraught process of redrawing the lines for existing council districts. The consensus on the Charter Review Commission seems to be that this is an issue that can wait.

Given the political challenges involved with council pay and city manger tenure and pay, that might be a wise move.

Most urgent, however, is repealing the limits on the city manager

Staff file photo Under current limits, City Manager Erik Walsh, right of Mayor Ron Nirenberg, would be forced from office in three years. Finding a qualified successor would be difficult.