Committee considers potential pay raises for El Paso mayor and city reps.

The Ad Hoc Charter Advisory Committee is considering whether the mayor of El Paso and City Council representatives should be given a pay raise.

At the Grandview Senior Citizens Center in northeast El Paso Monday night, members of the committee, gathered to discuss the issue in front of a public audience.

Right now city representatives earn a paycheck of $29,000 per year. The mayor is paid $45,000.

Those in the audience had differing opinions.

“The $29,000 is really not a good salary to begin with, and so we do need to increase that for sure,” Joe Molina, an El Paso resident said. “I think overall everything progress is steadily being made for the city of El Paso.”

El Pasoan Rod Linkous disagreed.

“I think they (City Council and mayor) are terrible. First of all the mayor and City Council do not deserve a raise especially after the $2 billion in debt we have,” Linkous said.

Back in 2015, an Ad Hoc Charter Committee recommended voters consider giving city representatives raises in order to increase the pool of people willing to run for office.

Voters would have been asked to raise the salary for a city representatives to $39,000, and the mayor’s salary to $55,000– but the city representatives voted to kill the effort to give themselves pay raises.

Three years later, during this first public meeting, the committee took an informal vote.

“We all seem to be in agreement on one thing, that we believe our council and mayor are underpaid and that we would like to propose at some point that between now and June 12, an increase of some amount for all members of council and the mayor,” Richard Dayoub, a committee member said.

The committee, which is appointed by the mayor and City Council representatives, is considering two other proposed amendments to the city charter.

One would reduce the prohibitions on outside public employment for mayor and city council members.
The other would instruct the city of El Paso internal auditor to report directly to the mayor and council.