Social media is buzzing about the uncanny, if not risky, coincidence between the Boston City Council’s current proposals to introduce resident parking permit fees and hike up parking violation fees, and Mayor Walsh’s recommendation to raise his salary and that of the City Councilors. ‘Audacious’ and ‘brash’ is how the Boston Herald editorial described the pay raise issue.
Boston’s city councilors at their regular Council meeting on Wednesday sent the proposal by the mayor – to give themselves and the mayor raises of more than 4 percent – to a study committee with no timetable for taking it up. If ultimately approved, the pay for the 13 councilors would increase to $103,500 annually, up from $99,500. The mayor’s salary would increase to $207,000 from $199,000. Though councilors are scheduled to begin reviewing the proposal in the near future, their pay increases would not go into effect until January 2020, after next year’s elections. The mayor would not see a pay increase until after the 2021 mayoral election. Bottom of Form
The proposed raises are based on recommendations from an advisory board and are endorsed by Mayor Martin J. Walsh.
Walsh’s request comes after The Municipal Compensation Advisory Board (MCAP) recommended an increase in salary for about 50 city jobs, ranging from the police commissioner to members of the licensing board. MCAP, a five-person board selected by the mayor, delivers salary recommendations every other year to keep the jobs in City Hall competitive, according to the city charter. Walsh has also recommended raises for some of his top staff members that would take effect in the fiscal year that begins July 1, though those raises were recommended separately in the city budget.
MCAP members say the decision was based on a study by Segal Waters Consulting.
Hundreds of workers employed by the city of Boston made more than $200,000 last year, according to newly released payroll information. City Council President Andrea Campbell said she accepts the salary recommendations for the mayor and the council because they were “set by an independent board and not the council and not set to go into effect until 2020.”
The Boston City Council earlier this month gave the go-ahead to increases for parking violation fines, which will be the first increase to city parking fines in a decade. The council approved the proposal by an 11-1 vote. Walsh is expected to sign the plan when he receives it and enforcement would start thereafter.
Under the new rules, the fine for a resident permit parking violation would increase from $40 to $60. The fine for parking in a no-parking zone downtown would increase from $55 to $90; the fine for parking in a no-parking zone anywhere else in the city would increase from $25 to $55. The council has also scheduled a hearing for June 28 to consider possible changes to the permits, which are required to park on many neighborhood streets. The hearing, requested by Councilor Michelle Wu, would include discussion of “the potential to charge a fee for parking stickers,” which are currently free, according to the agenda for the meeting.
Oh, and add to this Wednesday’s Globe story about the fact that there is still nowhere in the country where someone working a full-time minimum-wage job could afford to rent a modest two-bedroom apartment, according to an annual report released Wednesday by the National Low-Income Housing Coalition.
Not even in Arkansas, the state with the cheapest housing in the country. One would need to earn $13.84 an hour — about $29,000 a year — to afford a two-bedroom apartment there. The minimum wage in Arkansas is $8.50 an hour. Even the $15 living wage championed by Democrats would not make a dent in the vast majority of states.
Massachusetts, where the minimum wage is $11 an hour, ranks as the sixth most expensive state, with a wage of $28.64 needed to afford a two-bedroom apartment ($59,571 a year). And in the Boston-Cambridge-Quincy metropolitan area, nearly five dollars an hour more is needed than the state figure, at $33.46 ($69,600 a year).
Again, the adjectives – uncanny, risky, audacious, brash – do all come to mind. It is not lost among social media followers that the hand-picked compensation board will probably try justifying the recommendation based on statistical and comparative economic data analysis. However, the attempt at political justification will be a very interesting and curious one to say the least.
