The Riverdale City Council is considering giving itself a $4,600 raise later this month.
The proposed pay increase comes at a time when the city is losing business and city workers have gone without pay increases for five years.
Mayor Evelyn Winn-Dixon and councilman Kenny Ruffin are against the idea.
“Do I need a raise? I could really use it,” said Winn-Dixon who is in her second term and currently earns about $12,000 a year as mayor. “But I can’t justify taking a raise because I haven’t given my employees a raise in five years.”
City leaders haven’t done enough to bring money and business into the city, Ruffin added. Riverdale has lost several significant contributors to its tax base with the loss of several key businesses - Lowe’s and Pep Boys, Ruffin noted. He said the city should be focused on improving its economic development efforts.
“We need to grow and diversify the tax base before we start giving ourselves raises,” said Ruffin, a computer engineer for The Home Depot who is in his third term on the council. “I don’t think it’s time to being handing out raises. I don’t think we’ve performed to the level that deserves a raise.”
The city approved a budget of about $11.5 million, essentially unchanged from the previous year.
“There was no money for recreation this year,” he said, noting that the city lost $38,000 putting on free concerts last summer. “We should be doing more things for the common good of the city.”
Council members Cynthia Stamps-Jones, Wanda Wallace and An’Cel Davis could not be reached for comment. Wallace is a third-term council member while Stamps-Jones and Davis are in their first term on the council.
The mayor and council jobs are part-time. The mayor gets about $12,000 a year while council members get $9,600 each. Riverdale has about 220 employees, many of whom work in the fire and police departments. With the exception of a recent bonus, Riverdale workers have not had a raise in about five years.
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