{"id":50468,"date":"2022-02-09T19:35:54","date_gmt":"2022-02-09T19:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=50468"},"modified":"2022-02-09T19:35:54","modified_gmt":"2022-02-09T19:35:54","slug":"that-would-be-some-pay-raise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=50468","title":{"rendered":"That would be some pay raise!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Swallow hard, Fort Worth residents, if you intend to grant your city council the pay increase it is asking of you.<\/p>\n

To be crystal clear, I don’t have a dog in that hunt, given that I live a couple of counties over, in Collin County. But, dang! That’s a hefty raise to accept. Voters will get the chance on May 7 to decide if their council members and mayor deserve what they’re asking.<\/p>\n

Here’s the deal: Council members would get a bump from $25,000 annually to $76,000; the mayor’s salary would jump from $29,000 a year to $99,000.<\/p>\n

Say it with me: Wow!<\/em><\/p>\n

Newly installed Mayor Mattie Parker said the council has earned the big boost. “We want to serve well on behalf of the people of Fort Worth, the fastest-growing city in the country,” Parker said at Tuesday night’s council meeting. “I think we’re worth it, frankly.”<\/p>\n

Parker believes that Fort Worth’s elected body deserves to be more on a par with neighboring Dallas, where the mayor earns $80,000 annually; council members earn $60,000 per year.<\/p>\n

Fort Worth tried to boost the council’s pay in 2016, but voters rejected that measure. I don’t know what Cowtown’s residents are thinking today, except that they might be mirroring much of the discontent with government at all levels and, thus, could be reluctant to grant such a huge pay increase.<\/p>\n

I remember a couple of years ago when Rockwall County commissioners granted themselves a gigantic pay increase while limiting raises for county employees to a fraction of what commissioners got for themselves.<\/p>\n

What’s more, I moved to Collin County three years ago from Amarillo. Do you know how much that city’s council earns? Ten bucks per meeting! <\/em>Plus expenses if they travel somewhere representing the city. I will add that Amarillo is a city of more than 200,000 residents, so it ain’t exactly what you would call a “tiny burg.”<\/p>\n

It’s fair to ask whether Fort Worth’s municipal work force is going to see a significant pay increase, too, while the politicians at the top rake in the kind of dough they’re asking voters to give them.<\/p>\n

Fort Worth city council puts pay raises on the May ballot | wfaa.com<\/a><\/p>\n

What might be a better alternative? Perhaps an incremental raise would do the job, raising council members’ salaries a little at a time.<\/p>\n

This all-at-once approach seems a bit too much to swallow.<\/p>\n

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n

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Swallow hard, Fort Worth residents, if you intend to grant your city council the pay increase it is asking of you. To be crystal clear, I don’t have a dog in that hunt, given that I live a couple of counties over, in Collin County. But, dang! That’s a hefty raise to accept. Voters will … Continue reading That would be some pay raise!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[288,8305,9047],"class_list":["post-50468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-dallas-city-council","tag-fort-worth-city-council"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50468"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50473,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50468\/revisions\/50473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}