Slidell City Council agrees to lower salaries

Starting July 1, 2010, all Slidell elected officials will make less money.

By a close vote of 5 to 4 Tuesday night, the Slidell City Council agreed to lower the salaries of the mayor, police chief, and council members.

The proposed ordinance had been tabled at the June 9 meeting, because the original wording would only lower the salaries of the mayor and police chief. Mayor Ben Morris and some on the council thought that council members should be included.

Tuesday, Councilman at large Landon Cusimano submitted an amendment that would lower the council members’ pay from $18,750 to $16,225 a year. The mayor’s salary would be reduced from $104,212 to $90,000 and the chief of police would go from $93,791 to $81,000.

The council wanted the salary decreases as a way to save money in an economy where sales tax revenue is declining. Even though the decreases would not affect the current mayor and council, Morris and some on the council objected because they though the decrease would not attract qualified candidates in the future.

“You don’t hire someone to run a $40 million corporation by offering a lower salary,” Morris said. “We are running pell-mell into the past.”

But Cusimano said that the mayor’s current salary was one of only three mayors in the state that made over $100,000, the other two being New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and the council wanted to level the playing field. He said the council salaries needed to be brought in line with others around the state.

“As councilman, we are pretty high on the food chain,” Cusimano said.

Councilman Lionel Hicks agreed, and added that money is not a motive to run for an elected office.

“We don’t do this job for the money. My satisfaction is in getting things done,” Hicks said.

Still other council members like Warren Crockett, Kim Harbison and James Devereux said the salary cuts did not save a lot of money for the city. Harbison suggested that the salary cuts be 10 percent instead of the suggested 13 percent.

Councilman Ray Canada submitted another amendment that would make the effective date of the ordinance June 30, 2009. According to the City Charter, a sitting council cannot vote on any salary change a year before a new council is elected. City attorney Tim Matheson explained that if the ordinance passed, but the mayor vetoed it, then it would go past July 1 to override the veto and that would violate the charter since the fiscal year goes from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010.

Both amendments passed by a vote of 7 to 2 each, with Crockett and Devereux voting against each amendment. The amended ordinance passed 5 to 4 with Harbison, Crockett, Devereux and Bill Borchert voting no.

On a similar note, the council postponed a vote on an ordinance that would stop any step increase in salary for classified or unclassified city employees. The council is worried that with declining sales tax revenue there may not be enough money for the step raise. The ordinance was postponed to change the wording.

In other business, there was no dissension as the council unanimously passed a bill that bans video bingo in the city. The ordinance does not ban regular “call” bingo, which a lot of churches and non-profits depend on for revenue. However, Canada said video bingo is not economically feasible for the city. Even though video bingo vendors pay a license fee to the city, Canada said the expense of regulating video bingo “eats up the money paid for licensing.” He added that video bingo does not promote social interaction.

“A call bingo game lasts 25 minutes, and brings people together. A video bingo game last 14 seconds and there is no human interaction,” Canada said.