According to Lula City Manager Dennis Bergin, the mayor and members of the city council haven't had a raise in their base pay since 1982. It appears that will change in the next few months.
"The last city charter dating all the way back to 1982 [and] amended in 1994, apparently never changed the base pay," Bergin said in an email statement, following last week's regular meeting of the Lula City Council.
Currently, council members are paid $100 per month for the attendance at monthly work sessions and voting sessions. The mayor is paid $400 per month. The proposed increase would boost monthly base pay to $250 per month for council members and $550 for the mayor. Bergin said elected officials are compensated for a limited number of additional meetings each month.
"The council can receive $100 per 'meeting outside the city per month,' up to four additional meetings, and receive $50 per 'meeting inside the city per month,' up to six meetings," Bergin said. "Obviously, the council did adopt and amend a per-diem amount through the years...With the past year of the pandemic, the council has not met outside of the city at all, where in the past they would meet regularly with other municipalities and [with] Hall County and Banks County, quarterly and monthly."
City Attorney Joey Homans said in Monday's meeting he will schedule two public hearings prior to any change in the pay schedule. He encouraged Lula residents to do some research, taking a look at the Georgia Department of Community Affairs 2020 Municipal Wage and Salary Survey.
"...which will reveal that for Lula's estimate for our population group we are currently at the very low end of that scale, and even with what council is proposing - what the [finance] committee is proposing - we will still be at the low/middle part of the amount of compensation for council members and for mayor," Homans said. "Some of them [other cities] range as high as for mayor up to $12,000 annually, and obviously what you're proposing would be well short of that. Council member likewise is at the low/middle of the range for similarly-sized cities in the state of Georgia."
Homans said he plans to schedule public hearings on May 10 and May 17.
