Should Fort Worth voters give mayor, council big pay raises? Here’s our recommendation

Child: Mom, can I have an extra cookie in my lunch?

Mom: No.

Child, the following week: Can I have three extra cookies in my lunch?

Mom: You must be planning to run for office someday.

Fort Worth residents said no in 2016 to paying the mayor $60,000 a year and City Council members $45,000. The current council apparently thinks the way to overcome that is to ask for more, much more.

A charter amendment on the May 7 ballot would push the mayor’s annual pay to nearly $100,000 and council members nearly $77,000. And by tying both to top staff leaders’ pay, the amendment would probably ensure regular raises without voter review.

The council’s argument for the change is right, but its approach is wrong. Voters should again say no.

The mayor currently makes $29,000 and council members $25,000. Mayor Mattie Parker and other council members make the case that such low salaries may prohibit many people from running for office. Only those whose spouses can bear the family budget or with businesses that can run with minimal supervision or flexible hours can afford to serve.

City Council was not meant to be a full-time job. The city manager and his staff run the city, and the council broadly sets policy and oversees the manager.

To be fair, though, that textbook definition doesn’t quite match the real world. When constituents need help, they seek out the person they voted for. When businesses and developers seek to build in the city, a council member is generally involved.

If we’re going to require that of members, we need to make sure economic status isn’t a bar to service.

But there’s a limit, and this proposal blows past it. The mayor and council should not be paid as executives. It risks inviting more meddling with the professionals we hire and trust to run day-to-day operations.

We would support a more modest increase, such as that proposed in 2016. Another idea is to pay the elected officials the median salary of a city employee.

Nearly tripling pay all at once is unseemly. The cost to the city would be relatively modest — about half million a year out of hundreds of millions the city spends each year. But right now, taxpayers are besieged on all sides. Inflation and soaring home valuations have people in a vise, and government at all levels should demonstrate frugality.

Fort Worth’s pay lags significantly behind its peer cities in Texas. But there’s not much evidence that those cities are getting more bang for their bucks. That said, a growing, diverse city needs to make service as attractive as possible. A sensible wage, with voters still able to weigh in on future increases, is the way to go. Voters should turn down this proposal and demand better.

Several other charter amendments on the ballot would largely clean up outdated language in the city’s governing document. They deserve yes votes.

One, at first, seems to bar the city from expanding its public health operations, an odd choice given the lessons of the recent pandemic. But city officials say that the charter currently requires the city to have a public health department when, in recent years, Tarrant County has taken the lead in health services.

The amendment would align the charter with the current arrangement, but the city could choose to maintain a health department if it wanted.

Early voting starts Monday.