Wrong time for talk of raises

Amid the economy’s floundering, several members of the Waynesboro City Council are contemplating economics of a more personal sort. Mayor Tim Williams and Councilwomen Nancy Dowdy and Lorie Smith think increases in their pay are in order, to the maximum allowed by state law, $13,000 annually for the mayor and $12,000 for the remainder of the panel. These moves could be augmented by higher taxes, with values in the recently completed reassessment expected to increase by 10 to 15 percent.

Where to start? How about with a preface: Few positions are more thankless than that of elected official in a small town. Most hold down regular, full-time jobs while devoting as much as 40 additional hours a week to the sundry affairs of the council. Escaping those duties can be like trying to shed skin. Complaints trail small-town elected officials to grocery stores, restaurants and their back porches, where they almost invariably encounter someone with a beef. Serving in elected office is a sacrifice of time fraught with headache.

While local officials work with budgets valued at tens of millions of dollars, their personal budgets are exponentially smaller, in the tens of thousands of dollars familiar to most of the rest of us. Many motives can be associated with the desire to run for office. Making money from the endeavor is not among them. Nor should it be.

Still, another caveat: The populations in Front Royal and Martinsville are about a third smaller than Waynesboro’s, but their council members are paid about a third more. Staunton’s council pay is almost double Waynesboro’s. The current annual salaries are $5,100 for Waynesboro City Council members, $6,100 for the mayor. Williams proposes increasing those rates by $6,900 starting in July 2010. True, many people would welcome such a boost in a town where the median annual household income is $38,000. But there are those attached strings.

Such logic wilts in juxtaposition with politics, in the realm of which timing is a priceless commodity. Here is where Williams and the duo of Dowdy and Smith falter. It surely has not escaped their notice that the country is in the throes of an historic downturn. Some of their constituents have lost jobs. Others remain employed but are struggling to rub together nickels. Consideration of increased salaries for elected officials while feeling a constrictor’s grip on household budgets is bound to feel like another cold slap to the cheeks of some taxpayers.

It might not be the last to come from the council. In fact, the sting could be far sharper from the looming tax burden. The recently completed citywide reassessment will increase property values by 10 percent to 15 percent, according to a council official. At 10 percent, the value on a median-priced home would move from $249,900 to $274,890. The owner’s annual property tax bill would swell by $180 to $1,924, based on the current rate of 70 cents per $100 of assessed value.

State law seeks to circumvent such a windfall by requiring that officials advertise tax rates that provide for only a 1-percent increase in revenues following a reassessment. Officials can adjust that rate, then hold a public hearing. Vice Mayor Frank Lucente said he wants to offset value increases by shrinking the tax rate. Williams and Smith were not so sure.

Taxpayers have little choice but to adjust their personal budgets in accordance with the current economic state of things. Waynesboro’s elected officials have a duty to do the same, both on the subject of their pay and with regard to property taxes. The voters who elected Williams as part of a conservative bloc led by Lucente surely expected as much and deserve it. He would do well to remember those who sent him.