Gilbert council adds members' pay to budget discussion

By Tom Blodgett
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Three members of Gilbert Town Council requested a late addition to the town budget — a resolution calling for pay increases for mayor and council members. 

The addition, which is not a separate agenda item, is slipped into the middle of an 800-plus page council packet and was added a little more than an hour before the open-meetings law deadline of 24 hours before tonight’s meeting. 

The resolution does not specify how much of an increase would be made from the $43,631 for mayor and $21,012 for council, the same as it has been since 2018, rather leaving it open for discussion at the meeting. It would take effect when new members from the 2024 election are seated in January 2025. 

The budget is up for final adoption at council’s meeting 6:30 p.m. tonight at Gilbert Town Hall, 50 E. Civic Center Drive. 

The resolution was added to the agenda packet at 5:27 p.m. June 3. The request came from council members Jim Torgeson and Chuck Bongiovanni and Vice Mayor Scott Anderson. 

The resolution notes that the current salaries were adopted in 2018 and includes language that says “the Town Council believes it to be in the best interests of the community to further adjust the compensation of the Mayor and Councilmembers.” 

Torgeson said now is the appropriate time to have the discussion on what council pay should be. 

“Everybody keeps miscommunicating it and just everybody's afraid (of the discussion) because the perception is that you're trying to do something weird, and it's just not,” he said.  

He said the discussion arose because people were dropping out of council elections when they realized they could not afford to do what amounts to a full-time job at the current pay rate. 

“I've heard too many people want to run or start to run and figure out the real hours,” he said. “They can't do it. They pull out. So you're either rich, retired, or you got a sugar daddy paying your bills (to be on council).” 

But Mayor Brigette Peterson said she was concerned about transparency in the way it was added to the budget. She said it a principle the council has been unified on and also a community expectation. 

“With all of this in mind, I cannot in good conscience support the manner in which a discussion about council compensation was added to the agenda item 8,” she wrote in a text message responding to a Gilbert Independent inquiry. “Unless someone had reviewed the full agenda packet prior to 5:27 p.m. last night to see pages 200 and 201 now exist, they’d have no idea a ... resolution to increase council compensation was up for discussion tonight.” 

The agenda packet is 852 pages long and includes documents and communication on all topics on the agenda. 

Torgeson said he does not have a number in mind for salaries and it is open to discussion. He said whatever adjustment might be made would be minor and should be based on benchmarking against other communities and lowest paid staff members. He said the current rate for council members amounts to $10.13 an hour for him. 

However, Torgeson said the pay should not be so high as to incentivize people to run for the money. 

“We already disincentivize too many people, and what we're doing is we're making it so more people will run, I don't know, against us,” he said. 

We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X.     

Tom Blodgett
Senior News Editor | Gilbert

tblodgett@iniusa.org

Meet Tom
Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.

Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.

Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism. 

Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.  

Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).