Pittsfield Board to Mull School Committee Pay Increase
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Should the School Committee be paid more? This conversation will pick up soon.
On Tuesday, the City Council unanimously voted to send a request from Ward 1 Councilor Kenneth Warren and Ward 4 Councilor James Conant to the Personnel Review Board.
In February, the Ordinance & Rules subcommittee recommended not to approve the request and referred it to the Charter Review Committee, which determined it should be addressed through an ordinance.
"The School Committee had never been paid until 2015. This is now 10 years later. We're having a charter review as a result of a petition of mine. Their pay needs to be adjusted before July of this year, or it can't be done for another two years. It's the right thing to do," Warren said after motioning to refer to the review board.
"Even if we double it, the School Committee pay, for six of them, it will only be $25,000."
He said the city would get what it pays for and cited the committee's hard work over the past year, which involved a difficult budget and allegations against Pittsfield Public Schools staff.
"There's a lot that's on their plate," he said. "Frankly, they do probably as much, sometimes maybe even more than we do, and they don't even get half of what we do."
School Committee members are paid $4,000 annually, city councilors $8,000, and the council president makes $10,000. The council's last raise occurred in 1994.
Warren said the last election barely saw six School Committee candidates, and he would be surprised to see six people run this year. He explained that a pay change has to be done by ordinance and pointed out that when the Personnel Review Board handled the mayor's increase, it researched other Massachusetts communities to come up with a fair pay.
"That's what I think should be done," he said. "I think we need to look and make sure our School Committee is getting paid what they deserve to be paid if we expect to have competition for that seat, if we expect people to put in the effort for those seats."
While the effort was appreciated, in February some School Committee members and councilors felt it wasn't the right time to increase the budget, though many agreed with something like a cost-of-living increase.
Councilor at Large Alisa Costa said it is very hard to get people to run for city offices, and extra compensation makes the position more accessible.
"A lot of people know that I'm a big proponent of getting more people to run against me, run for any of our seats. Democracy is better when more people are involved, and it's really hard for people to do this without some more incentive, especially people from a broad background of experiences," she said.
"If you're working at a restaurant or something that doesn't pay you a lot of money, that extra amount of money means that you can take that time to serve the city instead of having to do your job and I think that's really important and that shows that we can support people to run and I, too, am concerned about the school committee after what's happened over the last year."
Ward 3 Councilor Matthew Wrinn said the pitch "definitely should be heard," but feels that money should be no motivation to run for office and serve the community.
Councilor At Large Earl Persip pointed to the cost of running for office, adding, "I think most of us spend more money going to events than actually what we take in from our salaries doing this."
"I think it's important to intrigue people to want to run. I mean, I can't say it enough. This is the perfect time to do it because the next school community picks our next superintendent," he said.
"There's going to be a lot of work involved in that. There will be a lot of meetings involved in that, a lot of time spent, and I think it's important. I think we have to get it right. We have to make sure people want to do that job and want to spend those hours."
He said that a small compensation out of a more than $200 million budget is a "drop in the hat" and will get people to run.
Ward 6 Councilor Dina Lampiasi said that past races with barely enough people show that something is broken in the system.
"I don't think anyone is running for local office, at least for the council or School Committee, to line their pockets," she said. "It's not a motivation, but it's a sense of security."
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