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Howard board backs pay hike for village president

By Kevin Boneske
Staff Writer

HOWARD – The village board wants to give the person elected village president next year a nearly $4,000 pay hike.

The board voted unanimously Monday, June 24, in favor of increasing the village president’s annual salary from the current $12,050 to $16,000, effective following next April’s election when village voters would decide who will be their president for the next three-year term.

Burt McIntyre, who was first elected village president in April 2008, is now in his fourth three-year term, having previously been a village trustee.

Village Administrator Paul Evert said he would be presenting an ordinance amendment to the board in July to be able to finalize the pay increase for next year.

Evert provided the board with a list of salaries of mayors and village presidents he obtained from more than a dozen municipalities in Wisconsin with populations ranging from 33,966 to 15,337.

As of June 1, the City of De Pere and the Village of Ashwaubenon are paying their mayor and village president more than Howard with respective annual salaries for those part-time positions being $33,091 and $30,000.

“I know nobody runs for trustee or village president with the idea it’s for the money, but kind of notable is that our two neighboring communities of De Pere and Ashwaubenon do pay their mayor and village president a lot more,” Evert said.

McIntyre said the job of the village president is determined by the board.

“To me, what your village president does is really at the permission of the respect you have of your village board,” McIntyre said. “You’ve given me some latitude to get involved, and really a lot of things I do are staff-motivated.”

Evert said the average annual salary for a part-time mayor/village president among the responding municipalities came to $16,280.

Trustee Chris Nielsen said Howard is striving to do great things like in Ashwaubenon and De Pere, which pay higher annual salaries for the village president and mayor.

“I would like to see some sort of increase in this (village president salary), but I’d like to see it over a period of time,” Nielsen said.

Because there has been “substantial growth” in Howard, Nielsen said the village president is getting more involved.
Trustee Craig McAllister said he had no problem with a raise.

“I always said that I was always impressed with the amount of time that President McIntyre spends doing his job and doing his duties here and taking care of everything,” McAllister said.

Instead of an incremental increase in salary, McAllister said he favored setting a fixed number for the next term and having a future board set a subsequent salary.

Director of Administrative Services Chris Haltom said the board could authorize increasing the village president’s salary in phases over the next term, such as with $16,000 in the first year and $2,000 raises in the next two years, as long as the raises were approved before the next election, in accordance with state law.

“You could inflation-index it, you could do a lot of different things if you wanted do,” Haltom said.

Trustee John Muraski said he would favor having the village president’s salary tied to inflation, so that the board wouldn’t have to revisit setting the salary.

Trustee Adam Lemorande said he wouldn’t want to link an annual percentage increase to the village president’s salary, because in a bad economy “I think it looks poorly that your elected officials are going to get that guaranteed raise.”

“When things are good, they’re good, but I think when it’s bad, they (the voters) don’t want to see increases,” Lemorande said.

Trustee Ray Suennen made a motion to increase the annual salary to $14,500 over the next three years.

He said he wouldn’t want someone who might get elected to back off on the duties and automatically get raises while in office.

After Muraski and McAllister called for increasing the annual salary to more than $14,500, the board amended the motion in favor of setting the salary at $16,000.

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