Council Salary Review Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. Good evening. The Puyallup Council Salary Commission meeting for July 2020 or 29, 20, 2026. It's called order. Woo. Will the clerk please call roll?

Commissioner Thompson. Commissioner Veal.

Present.

Commissioner Ruff.

Present.

Vice Chair Gar.

Present.

Chair Holmes.

Present.

Beautiful. With four out of five present, we do have a quorum.

Thank you. So the next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda. So I have a motion to approve the agenda.

I'll put a motion to approve.

Do I have a second?

I'll second.

Okay. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. I'm all opposed. Okay. Next item on the agenda is the approval of minutes. Can I have a motion to approve the minutes for March 11, 2026?

I'll put the motion to approve the minutes.

Do I have a second?

I'll second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. All opposed? The next item on the agenda is the citizen comments. Do we have, I know we don't have a sign in, so do we have any citizens? Yeah, please come on up. For the record, state your name, your address, or city council district. The advice that you're limited to three minutes. The clerk will provide a nonverbal or a verbal notice when only 30 seconds remain. As a reminder, this portion of the meeting is the salary commission's opportunity. Oh, sorry, that was for me. Go ahead.

Bud Metzger, District 3. Thank you.

Nice to meet you.

I'm here to talk about the state of the city and council salary increases or non-increases. this year given the situation of the economy and the difficult decisions that are ahead of us that we need to fund that you might not see in the general fund but how the city spends its money which is what the council determines um personally i think at this point uh well just for Real quick as a background. A couple of meetings ago the nurses, and some of the, the staff at the hospital came here because their, their salaries. They were negotiating their union salaries at the at the hospital, and they felt like the, the. their superiors were not doing so in good faith and so they were talking about the difficulties with they had living here and working here because they needed pay increases to be able to meet their rent and food and such and so um with that in mind and talking to a lot of people around here is people are feeling the pressures of the economy right now in severe ways and I think giving the council a raise at this time might not be sensitive to the challenges that the overall community is feeling regarding how much money they have and how they meet their budgets, because a lot of people are working really hard to try and make it. And so I just hope you'd take that in consideration as well, because there are a lot of people Well, I help older people and different stuff just because I live here a long time. And there's a lot of people that if they hear somebody gets, you know, you know, $12,000 raise, you know, they're gonna, it's tough for them, especially since they, you know, so, you know, just all I'm saying is consider, consider that in your, in your thought process, because we might change. And yeah, we're kind of in the middle of the road, you know, when I look at the salary surveys, but, you know, in some respects, but it's about the people that don't have that capability to get a raise that you might think about, you know, maybe that money could be spent in a different way to help those people. So thank you.

Thank you. Do I have any other citizens? I would like to come up for comment. Okay. The next item on the agenda is the public hearing. So public hearings related to setting the 2026 city council salaries. So it is open if anyone would like to come up to discuss anything pertaining just to the city council salaries of 2026. Yes. Right.

Two times. Thank you. Yeah. Bud Metzger district three. Um, uh, you know, the council, um, uh, you know, you have rules that you have to follow and criteria you have to follow in setting the salary for council. And that's been set forth in Puyallup municipal code, which is the Puyallup law created by the council. And, um, part of the, the, um, the benefits that the council receives that you can't consider in determining their salary. And I'm saying this, not so much to you, cause you do know it, but to the public is that they can't consider how much healthcare benefits the council receives, or you can't consider that. But a lot of the public doesn't know that you can't consider that. And that's a substantial amount of benefits for the council. And I just hope the public knows that. And so that when you make the decision, you know, you're limited in scope and what you can, what you can evaluate and what you can't as in cities that pay, you know, that are 25%, you know, greater population than us or 25% lower population than us, i.e. Des Moines, Bothell and other cities like that in the Puget Sound core. So I just wanted to add that to the discussion.

Thank you. Do I have any other public hearing comments? Okay. I'll close the public hearing at 510. The next item on the agenda is the work session topics. We have the compensation comparable chart out for 2026. Take it away, Yesenia.

Yes. So for 2026, there were a few changes, not much in the population. It did go up a little bit compared to our last years. So that did have a change. There were a couple of cities, too, that are now having council salary commissions. So a lot of their salaries have changed dramatically, for example, Olympia's. has changed a lot. They did increase their council salaries about 3.8%. And some of them did not choose to change their council salaries just based off of the information that they had, so on and so forth. Um, the, um, I believe the medium was the one that changed the most. We were up last year for deputy mayor and council member this year. We are down deputy mayor and council member. Um, but the mayor is up, um, same as last year and the population comparisons did not make any changes at all compared to our last few years. If you have any questions I'm here to answer.

Thank you. All right. Uh, last item on the agenda is a commissioner comments. Um, so commissioner rough, any comments?

Uh, no additional comments, but I appreciate, appreciate our citizens sharing their thoughts.

Perfect. Thank you. Commissioner veal. Any comments?

Um, no comments for me at this time. Thank you.

Okay. I sugar. Any comments?

Nope. Nothing new for me.

Okay. And then as for myself, again, thank you for sharing. I appreciate it. Thank you, everyone, for attending today's meeting. If there's no further comments, then I will adjourn the meeting at 5.13.