Why I Have Voted YES on Tucson’s Prop 413

Tucson’s ballot measure to raise the salaries of the Tucson Mayor and Council Persons deserves our support, which is why I voted YES, and you should, too. The city’s fact sheet has some reasonable points:

The 2023 Citizens’ Commission on Public Service and Compensation (CCPSC), an all-volunteer and diverse group of seven residents, studied these salary adjustments and obtained public input to develop a final report (find the report here: https://bit.ly/prop413report). The CCPSC cited these key factors in their recommendation for increases:

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• The Mayor and Council have not received a salary increase since 1999.
• The current salaries do not meet living wage requirements.
• Tucson – the second largest city in the state – lags the five largest cities in Arizona in compensation to elected leaders.
• A salary increase would be absorbed by the City budget and not negatively affect City services.
• Each member of the Pima County Board of Supervisors earns more than the Mayor and Council, despite that the City’s budget is larger ($2.2B) than the County’s budget ($1.8B).
• Reasonable compensation for Tucson’s Mayor and Council Members will help to attract diverse community members to pursue public office in the future.

City Prop 413 fact sheet

I agree with all those reasons, but I would add a few thoughts of my own.

1. The Mayor and Council are compensated as if running the city of a million people were a part-time hobby and have not changed since 1999. These jobs are not a damned hobby nor side gig; they are full-time jobs requiring serious executive and social skills, and a great deal of time invested in understanding the city’s problems by putting in the face time and legwork required to actually represent their constituencies. We are asking these people to run a sprawling and diversified corporate entity with an annual budget of over $2 billion, and billions more in fixed public assets and debt under management. We do have a permanent professional staff to assist them, but we tend to over-rely on these unelected professionals in doing many of the basic policy, planning, and prioritization tasks that really should be done by our elected officials, We need to attract serious people with real skills and commitment to these positions, and the current salaries are par with those of people running a single fast-food franchise outlet. Do you want better government? Pay for it!
2. The Mayor currently makes $42K/yr and the Councilors $24K/yr. These jobs all pay less than a waste management operator – yes, the Mayor makes less than a garbage man. As for the Councilors, you’ll be hard-pressed to find ANY job with the City that pays this little. One might quibble about HOW much more they should earn, but NO ONE can make the case that these are livable and equitable wages for the work done by these men and women. Given the hours they work, the idea that these are second jobs is absurd and, in the case of Councilors, this is sub-minimum wage (minimum wage in Tucson is currently $13.85/hr, and a full-time schedule at this salary would be less than $12/hr). Ask yourself if the current compensation would play a role in your decision to run for one of these offices. If the answer is ‘yes’, then you should VOTE YES.
3. The proposed salaries of $95K/yr for the Mayor and $76K/yr for the Councilors are not arbitrary. It is based on prevailing wage studies of equivalent jobs with equivalent time and skill requirements. These are reasonable wages that allow the public servants we hire to actually support a family and don’t require large sacrifices in order to take these jobs. This, in turn, opens these positions as a realistic option for thousands of people with the skills and disposition to do them well without sacrificing the financial well-being of themselves or their families. We will find ourselves with a much wider and diverse talent pool to draw from in elections for these positions because vastly more people will be able to afford to run for these positions.
4. The added expense of these reasonable salaries is trivial in comparison to the total payroll of Tucson, and will not diminish services or others’ wages in any way. I would argue, in fact, that if one were really serious about making the Tucson Council a more representative and effective organization, we should be considering also expanding the membership from just 6 members to at least 15. Our ratio of population to city council membership in Tucson (and Arizona, in general) is scandalously high. We ask these men and women to represent far too many people and far too many diverse areas for good representation already, and to ask them to undertake such a task for less than minimum wage is simply absurd.

Tucson Councilor Steve Kozachick argues elsewhere that these positions are already slated for a salary bump in 2025 as a result of a state law change in County Supervisor salaries. My response? So what? Why wait another 2 full years (the city adjustment wouldn’t come in until Dec. ’25) in order to pay people fairly. Should that state law result in even higher salaries (he estimates $96K for Councilors and $120K for Mayor), then great! I’ve no problem with that at all, and neither should you.