Hefty pay raises will remain in the Charlotte City Council’s fiscal year 2022 budget after an effort to strip the measure failed along party lines.
The budget proposes increasing the mayor’s salary from $28,012 to $39,646, a 41.5% increase, and increasing the mayor’s total compensation from $45,912 to $59,868, an increase of 30.4%.
Charlotte city council members will see their pay rise 50.8% from $21,646 to $32,638, and their total compensation will increase by 51.8%, from $34,546 to $52,444. The increases are meant to align the Charlotte City Council pay with the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners, according to the city’s budget document.
Mayor Pro Tem Julie Eiselt, a member of the Citizen Advisory Committee that unanimously recommended the pay raises, defended the move, saying it will open the door to quality candidates.
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“I’ve talked to people that would love to do this job. They can’t afford to do it, and that’s just wrong,” Eiselt said. “We should be able to attract all kinds of people that are still want to serve.”
Republican Council members Ed Driggs and Tariq Bokhari opposed the move. Bokhari said it is not the right time for raises, and he has a belief public service should be about sacrifice.
“It’s about coming here and being able to come in and say, ‘I’m going to, like our founding fathers, spend a small period of time giving back at great expense to ourselves and what we could be doing otherwise to make a difference,” he said. “By increasing the salaries, we make it so that people start looking at this more as, well, ‘I could make a little bit more money if I went and did that,’ and it looks like a career to them.”
Eiselt countered by saying elected officials make lots of sacrifices, and pay doesn’t have to be one of them.
“Sacrifice is also missing all your family dinners, missing your kids’ soccer games, missing birthdays,” Eiselt said. “Sacrifice comes in many forms. It doesn’t have to be financial.”
The pay raise will be included in the budget and take effect in July.
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