[Southsider2k12]

http://www.nwitimes.com/news/crime-and-cou...5a0b73375e.html

"As our city continues to improve, when you have 42 employees that are making more money than the mayor I think there's something wrong with that," said Meer, who's in the first year of his second term.

The mayor's salary would go from about $68,571 to $81,942 annually if approved by the City Council next month.

He also emphasized the increase would not be funded with tax dollars.

Instead, it would come out of the budgets of the water and sewer departments where some of his duties as mayor are invested.

[outsider]

I have no problem with this. Meer, Oberlie, Brillson, and Behler all worked like dogs. Regardless of anyone's agreement with each of these mayors policies a typical day for a mayor starts with breakfast meetings at 7:00 or 7:30 and ends the day with meetings often lasting to 11:00 PM. Not to mention all the public events they are asked to attend/speak or MC. They are also appointed to various other governmental and quasi governmental boards that routinely meet in Indianapolis and in other cities state wide. They read A LOT, to in order to educate themselves on all kids of issues. Each of the above mentioned have given up time with kids, spouses and friends to serve as mayor.

Being mayor is not simply sitting behind a desk and smiling for photographers.

[Southsider2k12]

It looks absolutely terrible to declare multiple financial emergencies, hammer your day to day employees with things like job cuts and high deductibles, and then get 10 times the raise that the same people who have spent years suffering through those cuts.

Sure the raise can be justified by workload, but it looks horrible. I would also bet that it is going to become a wedge issue for a challenger to the Mayor's job, mostly likely the one guy on the council who spoke out against it.

Is it worth all of that to the Mayor? I hope so, because it is all in motion now. Honestly he shouldn't have tried to get a raise any bigger than what the City employees got.

[Southsider2k12]

Meer got about a 9% raise.