A divided University Place City Council voted early this morning to rescind a 2010 pay raise they adopted just two weeks ago for council members elected today.

A proposal to cut council pay by 50 percent and increase their family health-insurance premiums failed when the six members present deadlocked 3-3.

The actions came at the conclusion of a remarkable five-and-a-half hour meeting punctuated with passionate pleas from citizens to save the city’s popular parks and recreation program. At one point, more than 250 coaches, players, parents, senior citizens and others flooded the council chambers and spilled out its front and side doors.

Many residents made pointed comments to council members about the inadvisability of raising elected officials’ salaries when the city faces what’s been described as the biggest fiscal crisis in its 15-year history.

Mayor Linda Bird promoted the pay-cut plan as a way of slicing more than $100,000 from the council budget that could then be used to keep core recreation programs in place. She was backed in her effort by Councilwoman Debbie Klosowski and Councilman Gerald Gehring.

Critics, including Councilwoman Lorna Smith, charged Bird was grandstanding. Councilman Ken Grassi said Bird was unfairly linking the issues of council salaries and potential cuts to city-sponsored recreation activities. Councilwoman Jean Brooks voted with Smith and Grassi; Councilman Stan Flemming was absent.

No decisions have been made on how and where to pare city programs for 2010, City Manager Bob Jean told the audience. But there will be cuts, and they will be deep, he said.

He presented a grim fiscal picture, saying the city must slash $4 million to balance its $16 million operating budget for 2010. He expects 20 staff members to lose their jobs.

The city subsidized the parks and recreation programs with about $500,000 this year, Jean said.

The council salary issue votes at around 12:15 a.m. came less than seven hours before the polls were to open on an election in which four of the council’s seven seats are on the ballot.

Three of the most vocal council members involved in the debate face opposition in today’s election. Bird is challenged by Javier Figueroa; Smith is opposed by Eric Choiniere; and Grassi faces Carl J. Mollnow. Rose Ehart and Denise McCluskey are running for the seat being vacated by Flemming.

The vote to cut council pay came first, with Bird, Klosowski and Gehring in favor; Grassi, Smith and Brooks opposed.

When that failed, Grassi asked if the council could rescind the pay raise action it took Oct. 19 and simply put things back the way they were. That motion was approved 4-2, with Bird and Klosowski voting no.

Both said they wanted pay cuts. Even without the raise approval, council salaries will rise 3 percent next year under a cost-of-living provision.

Council members now are paid $1,367 a month, the mayor pro tem earns $1,476 and the mayor $1,639.

Benefits packages bring council members’ compensation up to $2,589 monthly; the mayor pro tem’s total package to $2,698; and the mayor’s to $3,040.

The pay hike approved by the council two weeks ago would have raised salaries roughly another 7 percent on top of the 3 percent cost-of-living increase. It set council members pay at $1,500 a month, the mayor pro tem’s salary at $1,600 and the mayor’s at $1,700.

It would have applied only to the four seats up for election today. Under state law, salary votes taken by a council can only affect positions elected after the action. Had the councilmanic raise stayed in effect, only the four people elected today could have benefitted. The other three council seats’ pay wouldn’t go up until after the 2011 election.

Bird’s critics charged she was bringing the issue up on the eve of the election only for political gain and that she wrongly inflamed the public by putting up a Web site over the weekend heralding the potential death of youth sports and other recreation programs. They also claimed she created an artificial emergency by insisting the council take up the issue Monday night and that she wrongly linked the raise in council salaries with cuts to recreation programs.

Bird called that hogwash, saying most of the votes already were in the mail and that she simply was trying to do what was right. If the council didn’t act before the election, there was no chance at the savings she was trying to achieve, she said.

As the council debated the issue into this morning, Smith asked whether a vote after midnight would stick under state law. Jean said it would if taken before the polls opened.

Cutting council salaries and benefits under Bird’s plan could save the city $109,668 next year, management analyst Steve Buter said.

Bird argued that’s enough money to buy two employees who would maintain the core of the city’s youth and senior recreation programs. She created the Web site and exhorted members of the public to come to the council meeting in defense of the recreation programs, which draw some 18,000 participants a year in the city of 32,000.

It was clear from the turnout that people want those programs – especially those for kids and senior citizens – saved. But the debate also exposed deeper issues of trust between the council and the community and reopened festering hurts over the long-delayed town center project.

During the first half of the meeting, dozens of residents made impassioned pleas for saving the activity programs. During the latter portion, many lambasted the council for giving any of its members raises at a time when the community is suffering.

A steady troop of speakers told the council shortly after the meeting began at 7 p.m. that University Place build its reputation and its cityhood as a place to work, live and play and that the community wouldn’t be the same without a vibrant city-sponsored recreation program.

Mike Gallagher, a youth coach, was among them.

The activity program “provides a lot of opportunities for families to get together and become one,” he said. Gallagher, a youth coach. It’s also a bond that keeps the community healthy, he added. Jean listened carefully to more than 90 minutes of testimony.

“The comments that I heard, the passions of the kids, all of that had an effect,” he told the crowd as he laid out the budget challenges.

He heard, he said, that “regardless of the choices that we make or how tight it is, we need to stay focused on the youth and senior programs.”

By the end of the meeting, as the salary issue was debated, questions of trust and cries of politicking grew louder.

“Timing is everything, and this is wrong,” resident Eric Richardson said, asking council members how they might walk down a hall and face employees who would be laid off knowing they’d given themselves raises.

The council raise vote was “unconscionable and you should rescind it,” he said.

James Janson, Jr., who’s been unemployed since February, told council members, “It seems like you guys are being greedy and taking it away from the community.”

Other speakers questioned Bird’s motives and spoke of election tactics.

Grassi said he believed the salary increase approved two weeks ago was modest for council members who are on call "24/7" and spend uncounted hours learning about issues, talking to residents and attending meetings.

The $400-a-month salaries enacted at cityhood in 1995 would now be worth around $2,586 if inflation were factored in, Smith said.

She thinks the council should investigate the formation of an independent salary commission to study the issue and make recommendations on future raises for the city’s elected officials.

Kris Sherman: 253-597-8659
kris.sherman@thenewstribune.com