Elected leaders in Aurora are set to decide Monday whether to ask voters for a substantial boost in pay — the City Council’s first request for higher compensation in nearly eight years.
If voters approved the raises in November, pay for council members and the mayor would jump far more than it did in 2018, when the last change took effect. Mayor Mike Coffman’s salary, now about $98,500, would rise by 52% to more than $150,000 annually. Most council members would see their pay more than triple, from about $22,700 to around $75,000.
The raises — about which some city officials are skeptical, including Coffman — would go into effect Jan. 1.
City Attorney Peter Schulte said the request for bigger paychecks did not come from anyone on the council but came from him and City Manager Jason Batchelor. With Aurora on the cusp of ranking in the top 50 most populous U.S. cities — it now comes in 51st, according to 2024 census estimates — Schulte said council hopefuls should “be able to afford to run for office.”
“We are a big city with big-city issues,” he said, noting that the job can easily demand 40 hours or more of work a week. “It’s not just the (council) meeting twice a month.”
Coffman said he puts about 60 hours a week into his job as mayor of the city of 403,000 — Colorado’s third-largest.
“In addition to meetings on weekdays, I often have scheduled meetings and events on nights and weekends,” the mayor said last week. “This Saturday, I will be doing a 10-hour shift (ride-along) with an (Aurora) patrol officer from 6:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Even when I’m at home, I’m reading reports and answering emails.”
Under the city’s charter, the top position in Aurora is considered full time, while the council seats are considered part-time roles. If the salaries measure is sent to the November ballot, voters would decide on it while also considering candidates for five council seats that are up this year.
In 2017, city voters approved the last major changes to city officials’ salaries, setting them at $80,000 for the mayor and $18,550 for council members. Since then, they’ve received cost-of-living raises, putting Coffman’s salary closer to $100,000 now.
But he doesn’t want another big pay boost.
“I think that the current pay is sufficient for me,” he said. “At age 70, I have outside income from previous careers in government, business and the military, so I’m not reliant on the mayor’s salary as someone else might be, making it difficult for that person to serve.”
Coffman plans to offer an amendment during Monday’s council meeting “to take the mayor out of the proposal.”
“And if my amendment fails, I will oppose,” he said. “Public service is, by itself, supposed to be a sacrifice.”
During the June 23 council meeting, during which a first reading on the issue passed unanimously, Councilwoman Angela Lawson noted that today’s low pay requires some members of the council to work a couple of jobs — in addition to their civic duties — to make ends meet.
Councilwoman Crystal Murillo, who in her day job serves as executive director of the social justice advocacy group Colorado People’s Alliance, thinks higher compensation would broaden the pool of hopefuls who might seek office.
The median household income in Aurora last year, according to census data, was $84,320.
“People can’t survive off this amount,” she said of the still-part-time salary voters approved for council members eight years ago. “I think this is a step toward making this job more accessible.”
Pay is inconsistent across cities
The structure of Aurora’s proposed compensation package for its elected leaders, Schulte said, is directly tied to the pay that Arapahoe County commissioners receive. The mayor would get a commissioner-level salary — $150,991 annually — while the council members would bring home half of that, or around $75,000 per year.
The advantage to this approach, he said, is that salaries in Aurora would automatically float upward in concert with regular cost-of-living adjustments that are made to commissioner pay. It would essentially depoliticize the process of determining compensation by putting future salary increases on autopilot.
“It’s going to be out of the council’s hands if this passes,” Schulte said.
Aurora’s move would echo a measure Denver voters passed last fall. It ended the requirement that the City Council there vote on the salaries of elected officials every four years in favor of adjusting pay levels to track the rise in the consumer price index.
At a yearly $205,991 salary, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston is the highest-paid mayor in Colorado. Council members in the state’s biggest city make $110,596, while the council president is paid $123,846.
Denver has a “strong mayor” form of government, which means that the mayor can hire and fire department heads and veto ordinances that the council passes. Colorado Springs adopted a similar system 15 years ago, but the city’s mayor makes far less than Johnston.
Aurora, for its part, has a council-manager form of government, in which mayoral powers are more equal to those of council members, though the city considered bolstering the mayor’s role two years ago. The effort fizzled out.
Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade’s annual salary is $129,740, the result of a $15,000 bump in pay approved two years ago. But the members of the council for that city of nearly half a million people are still paid a pittance — $6,250 a year.
“We’re the second-largest city in this state — it’s just appropriate for there to be fair pay,” said Colorado Springs Councilwoman Nancy Henjum, who was reelected to a second term in April. “If you want an equal and representative government, you need to pay a living wage.”
There have been many discussions in Colorado Springs about going back to the voters to ask for more money for the city’s elected officials, but so far it hasn’t happened, she said. The last time the council asked for more pay 12 years ago, voters resoundingly said no.
In Greeley, the answer to whether the mayor and the City Council should get a bigger paycheck was also no. That rejection came not from voters but from the potential beneficiaries of the pay bump themselves.
In November, the Greeley council unanimously voted down a raise, keeping annual pay at $12,600 for council members and $18,000 for the mayor.
“We felt pretty consistently that we’re not in it for the pay — so leave it alone,” Greeley Mayor John Gates said. “Salary is not a reason to have people run — and I sort of like that.”
While Gates thinks council pay is sufficient for his fast-growing city of 115,000, he acknowledges the responsibilities and pressures of the office are far heavier in Colorado’s big cities to the south.
“I would feel differently if I was Mike Coffman or Mike Johnston, working the job full time,” he said.
Roles have gotten ‘more complicated’
Kevin Bommer, the executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, which represents many cities and towns around this state, said it’s one thing for the mayor and council members of small cities to go without pay.
For example, Morrison has always had a volunteer mayor and board of trustees, though that will change next year when the trustees are set to start receiving $6,000 a year and the mayor will net an additional $3,000 annually.
“It’s difficult work, it’s time-consuming and it often prevents someone from pursuing a normal career, at least for the time they are serving in public office,” Bommer said. “These positions have gotten more complicated over the years, and let’s face it: We don’t live in the most civil society.”
Aurora Councilwoman Francoise Bergan, who has served for nearly a decade, said she puts in anywhere from 30 to 50 hours a week into the job, serving on three policy committees and several outside boards.
Putting the pay hike proposal before voters at a time when the city is facing a budget shortfall between $20 million and $30 million “is certainly not ideal,” Bergan said.
“In fact, I’m not particularly in favor of it,” she said, “because I believe it could shift the motivation for serving from public service to financial gain.”
Several members of the public spoke out against Aurora’s proposed pay raises at last month’s city council meeting. One man scolded the council while participating in public comment over the phone: “Before you ask us to open our wallets, earn it.”
Coffman, the mayor, said if the Aurora council forwards the measure to the ballot on Monday, it will find out in November whether it has earned the extra cash or not.
“Ultimately,” he said, “the decision will be up to the voters.”
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