Council members may get big raise

Erin Neff

Friday, Dec. 11, 1998 | 11:16 a.m.

The Las Vegas City Council will kick off 1999 with a citizen committee's recommendation that it give itself a hefty raise.

The Council Review Committee agreed Thursday to recommend that City Council members earn 90 percent of the $54,000 Clark County commissioners make. That would increase council salaries from $36,900 to $48,600.

The committee also agreed to keep the salary differential between city councilmen and the mayor at roughly the same percentage it is now. The mayor's position thus would increase from $48,527 to $63,163 -- or roughly $9,100 more than the county commissioners earn.

"By the time we're done with this package, I might run for council," said committee member Fernando Romero, the lone dissenter on the pay raise amount -- although he agreed to an increase in salary.

Council members last received a pay raise in 1986. In 1987, the council adopted an ordinance that tied future raises to the Consumer Price Index and an annual cost-of-living adjustment.

If City Council accepts the committee recommendation, the pay raise would not take effect until after the next council election.

Councilman Michael McDonald said he believes that any recommendation from the committee ought to be taken to the voters.

"The taxpayers should be the ones to decide," McDonald said Thursday.

Councilman Arnie Adamsen said he agreed that voters -- not City Council or the state Legislature -- should approve any increase. He said, however, that he wouldn't decline a raise if he got one.

"Sure I'd love to get a raise, but anything I say is going to be seen as self-serving," said Adamsen, who was paid $15,000 a year when he was first elected to City Council.

It was committee member Bob Forbuss who recommended that the council salaries be tied to a percentage of the county commissioners' salaries. He said he favored having salary decisions taken out of the hands of the elected body.

County Commission salaries are set by the state Legislature.

"The Legislature, by default, would be making (City Council's) decision," Forbuss said of his decision to tie future City Council raises to County Commission salaries.

The Council Review Committee was created by City Council in October to examine the composition, job status and compensation of the board.

In an earlier meeting, the committee determined council seats should not be full-time in the sense that they preclude a person from holding another job. That choice should be left up to the individual running for the office, the committee decided.

At a meeting Dec. 17, the committee will try to come up with its recommendation regarding the size of the current five-member board.

Concerns about ethnic diversity and fiscal responsibility have been raised when some committee members discussed the notion of adding two seats.

The committee even obtained a phone survey of nearly 500 city residents to determine if they believed the council needed to be expanded.

Romero said he could not accept data from the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce survey because of what he called the "dismally-low" percentage of black and Hispanic responses culled during the random survey.

"I just know, as a minority myself, just how much credence to give (the survey)," said Romero, who is Hispanic. "I feel that (the minority) portion of the community was not taken into account as well as it could be."

Of those surveyed, the overwhelming majority -- 82.9 percent -- were white. One percent of callers identified themselves as Native American, 1.9 percent as Asian, 4.9 percent as Hispanic and 6.6 percent as black.

Romero said he believed it was important for the committee to consider the ethnic composition of the four wards before it makes any decision on the expansion of council. Blacks and Hispanics have long been underrepresented on the elected board.

Romero said it would be impossible, however, to change the ethnic composition of City Council significantly by adding two seats elected from two wards. Those seats would have to be at-large, giving candidates from anywhere in the city the right to run for those seats in order to make any difference regarding the ethnic composition, he said.

Committee member Leonard Goodall, a UNLV professor of public administration, said he thought City Council would have to have 10, 11 or 12 seats before there could be any change in the ethnic representation on the board.

"If two seats are added, you will not appreciably increase the likelihood of electing minorities to City Council," Goodall said.

Adding two seats -- with the recommended salary increase included -- would cost $573,240 annually. The addition of two seats would also lead to $170,000 in one-time costs related to the renovation of offices.

Adding one seat -- with the recommended salary increase included -- would cost $286,620 annually with one-time costs of $105,000.

The committee will make its final recommendation to the council Jan. 7.