Thursday’s Taylor City Council meeting was both disappointing and embarrassing.
On the one hand we have the people who came out to speak in opposition to a proposed increase in the council’s compensation (or honorarium). On the other, we have the actual vote the council took.
I served on the compensation committee. After the issue went off the rails in July, when our chair reported our recommendation, I decided to speak in defense of our work — essentially in opposition to the ordinance as presented. My remarks are appended below.
Many of those who spoke in opposition used the opportunity to make vicious, personal attacks on sitting council members. Every time a speaker “scored a hit,” people in the council chamber could hear the overflow crowd whoop and cheer.
The longer I sat there, the more embarrassed and disgusted I became. It was disrespectful and unbecoming.
Some kept their remarks civil — proving that there IS such a thing as civil political discourse, I guess — but too many people ranted at the council and took unnecessarily personal shots at individual members. I actually began to feel dirty for being in the same room with the hatefulness.
That said, I was stunned that the council voted 3-2 to approve a compensation package that eclipsed those of some larger cities in the area, with no explanation of why they voted the way they did. That they voted to make this compensation effective with the beginning of the fiscal year, Oct. 1, rather than waiting until each office was re-elected is inappropriate, and I said this in my remarks.
I also believe that the cavalier way this was accomplished has forever changed the political discourse in this community, and not in a good way.
Folks, very few of you behaved particularly well last night.
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Remarks to Taylor City Council, August 17, 2023
Thank you Mr. Mayor, Council.
My name is Richard Stone. I live at 1306 Cecelia St. I was a member of the committee tasked with making a recommendation to council about this and I’m here this evening to speak against Ordinance 2023-40 as presented.
The recommendation we submitted resulted from our examination of our charge, Section 4 of the Charter, a study of how other, similar-sized communities compensate their council members and careful attention to what members of the community said.
We believed it important that we understood the expectations laid out in the Charter.
All it says in regard to compensation is that council members be paid for two meetings a month. There are no expectations outlined. In fact, other than general qualifications, there are no expectations toward council activities at all. The charter doesn’t require visible attendance at community events, or that council members have an active social media presence or anything. It doesn’t require that members of the council be prepared for meetings — if I read it correctly, it doesn’t even require attendance.
I do believe it is important that members be visible and active at as many functions as they can because it allows the general public access to you, our elected representatives, but this is why we recommended it be examined by the next Charter Review Committee. Maybe there should be some minimum expectations.
Regarding the amount of the compensation — we asked the city staff to research cities similar in size and location to ours — not just other communities in Williamson County, but across the State of Texas. About one third of the cities surveyed didn’t pay council at all, or so little it could be disregarded for these purposes.
The rest ran the gamut. Knocking out the outliers, and allowing for population and administrative differences, I believe a straight-line reading of the research would have supported an honorarium of $175-$250 a meeting, but based on our outreach, I did not believe that would have broad community support.
Make no mistake, the majority of those who responded to our outreach agreed that $12.50 a meeting is too little. There is support in the community for raising council’s compensation, but this is excessive — and is as much or more than other, much larger cities, even in Williamson County.
Further, the majority of your constituents who responded to our outreach believe that it would be conflict of interest for you to give yourselves a raise — I believe this as well.
It is your decision, of course. If you believe that it’s important to increase your honorarium by this amount — even though it is a dramatic and startling departure from the recommendation made by the committee you appointed — at least be transparent, and have it effective only after each of you have won re-election.
It’s the ethical thing to do.
The Ragged Edge 