Salary increase proposed for Newburyport city councilors

Apr. 13—NEWBURYPORT — A proposed ordinance, introduced before the City Council on Monday, seeks to increase councilor salaries from $5,000 to $9,000 a year and the council president's salary from $6,000 to $11,000 beginning in January.

Councilor at large Charles Tontar, who co-sponsored the proposal with council President and Ward 2 Councilor Jared Eigerman, included supporting documentation with three methods to estimate the proposed amount.

First, he used the Consumer Price Index to show how the value of the dollar has changed over time.

He also shared data, collected by the mayor's chief of staff, Matt Coogan, during the fiscal 2020 budget discussion, to compare council salaries in 10 cities on the North Shore.

The average city councilor salary, taking nine North Shore cities other than Newburyport into account, was $12,214 in 2019. The average council president salary was $13,189.

His third method was what he called the "council President (Tom) O'Brien principle."

In 2014, O'Brien proposed an increase in council salaries, arguing, according to Tontar, that historically the councilor salaries had been proportional to the mayor's salary before an absolute amount was set in 1995.

The idea was that if the city has a mayor and council, the salaries should reflect that and the sum of the 11 councilor salaries should be equivalent to the mayor's salary, Tontar explained.

Councilors voted 9-1 to refer the proposal to the Committee on Budget & Finance for further discussion.

Ward 1 Councilor Sharif Zeid voted against referring the discussion to Budget & Finance. Eigerman was absent for the vote.

Tontar noted that he did not provide an argument in favor of an increase, but rather sought to "share with the public and the council the quantitative analysis that the council president and I examined before constructing the ordinance."

For more on the City Council meeting, see newburyportnews.com and Wednesday's print edition.