Charter review committee holds on voting as they discuss size and salary of city commission

The citizens charter review committee is pausing decisions on whether to boost the Tallahassee city commission's size and salary as they wait for more public input.

Thursday was the committee's second meeting and they officially began the review process by taking a look at the number of seats of the city commission and discussing the salary for the mayor and commissioners.

"My preference would be for us to have some discussion, but then not deliberate to find out until we have had more opportunity to receive public comment," committee member Sha’Ron James said. "I don't want to vote until I have heard more."

After a two-hour back and forth among the commission and public speakers, it was decided no votes would be taken until they hear more public opinion.

Listening to the community

Before Tuesday's meeting, the city disseminated a public survey looking to gather resident's thoughts, but there was a lackluster response.

The survey only received 30 replies out of nearly 200,000 residents for the city. Of those, seven respondents were anonymous, one was not a city resident, three were not registered voters, and seven indicated they had not read the city charter.

Former Tallahassee NAACP president Adner Marcelin was in attendance and pushed members to spread the word about the charter review process.

"I would just advise that, you know, we go out into our community to make sure they know of the changes that we are making so that when we get to the end of the road that we can really look back and say that we made an actual effort to put community input before making changes," Marcelin said.

The committee urged city employees to look into ways to better advertise the survey as well as finding a way to stream their meetings so more people can attend virtually.

Expanding past five

The committee received a presentation by Lynn Tipton of the Florida League of Cities to help them better understand the different types of city commission structures and what the number of a commission is relative to cities throughout Florida.

Tallahassee's city commission is currently five members, including the mayor and mayor pro-tem. Committee member Ernie Paine said he did not want the commission to grow, noting that it would also increase the size of the Blueprint board, whose meetings already run long with the twelve city and county commissioners.

"A lot of people say the city commission doesn't get done for political reasons, but in terms of basic efficiency of the meetings it works a lot better ... somewhat better than the county commission," Paine said.

Point: Charter review needs to focus on expanding commission, reviewing election structure

Counterpoint: Commission-packing and city districts? The time is never | Opinion

Other committee members brought up city utilities, the city's billion dollar budget, and the commission's responsibilities as things to think about when discussing the idea of expanding seats.

Bruce Strouble was another member in favor of keeping the five seat structure.

"Is the system not working? Unless we're saying that our five member commission is not working, then we need some kind of compelling reason ... and I haven't seen that yet," Strouble said. "I haven't seen a compelling rationale for us to make this change at this point."

Fair compensation

Under the city charter, city commissioners are paid $45,288 – half the salary of county commissioners who make $90,577 under state law. Mayor John Dailey, however, makes the same as the county commission chairperson.

While the city commissioner role has traditionally been considered a part-time job, the committee said that should be a factor when gauging their current pay. Multiple committee members and city employees pointed out that commissioners "treat it like a full-time job," despite many having second jobs.

One example is Commissioner Jeremy Matlow, who owns Warhorse Whiskey Bar and Gaines Street Pies.

Jared Willis questioned if the salary of the commissioners should be included in the city charter at all. He also suggested that commissioners shouldn't be in charge of setting their own salaries.

"I'm concerned about the understanding of public service and how it relates to salaries and how it gets conflated with 'my' taxes. I think on this issue when it comes to salary ... I'm not sure I'm convinced that the charter is the best place," Willis said. "... As we're talking about parity between the mayor and the commission I don't think the commission, frankly, should be in charge of setting the mayor's salary either."

The idea of another board to determine the salary of commissioners was tossed around but it was unclear how those board members would be appointed.

There were no numbers thrown out but the committee now looks to how to tackle the issue of salary and what capacity they would serve in the process.

The charter review committee's next meeting is Feb. 1 at 6 p.m. in the Tallahassee room in City Hall, and it is also available via WebEx.

For more information on the Charter Review process, please contact the Office of the Treasurer-Clerk at 850-891-8130 or citycharter@talgov.com.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story, incorrectly attributed a quote from Sha'Ron James to Elaine Bryant. The update also incorrectly stated that Ernie Paine was speaking about the length of City Commission meetings when he was referring to the Blueprint board. Jared Willis' comments were also clarified.

Arianna Otero is the City Solutions Reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat. Contact her via email at AOtero@tallahassee.com and follow her on Twitter/X: @ari_v_otero.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Charter review committee discusses city commission size and salary