As the Peachtree City Council bandied about budget cuts to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars this weekend, Councilmen Doug Sturbaum and Eric Imker said they supported raising the pay of Mayor Don Haddix, who is currently compensated at $9,000 a year [corrected amount].
Council members Vanessa Fleisch and Kim Learnard indicated they would not support the proposal, and Haddix said he would “go along” with whatever Imker and Sturbaum decided.
Imker said he has seen Haddix work well over 40 hours a week and that the salary was “kind of low for what he’s doing.”
Sturbaum said he would be OK with raising the mayor’s pay from $12,000 to $18,000. Imker said he would support a raise of up to $15,000 perhaps, and he agreed to discuss the matter later with Sturbaum.
If Haddix ultimately wins a raise, he would almost certainly be the only city official to get a raise this year. The upcoming fiscal year’s budget includes no raises for employees.
Raises for City Council were due to go into effect this year, bringing the mayor up to $18,000 a year and council members from $6,000 to $12,000 a year. But with the city’s budget woes, council last year voted to not fund those salary increases.
Fleisch and Learnard said they felt they “knew what they were getting into” regarding the pay when they ran for office.
“It’s very deserved but we don’t have the money,” Learnard said. “I want no more than I bargained for last fall when I campaigned.”
“The way the world is now it would be wrong to take anything more,” Fleisch added.
