It took some haggling, several amendments, several votes and eventually two tie votes broken by Mayor Richard Irvin, but the Aurora City Council Tuesday night increased pay for aldermen, beginning in 2027.
The City Council was under the gun because the deadline for increasing any compensation for aldermen is 180 days before aldermen take office after the April 1, 2025 election. That is in early May, which meant aldermen had to vote on any compensation increase by early November.
Any pay raise does not affect current aldermen and would not take effect until June 1, 2027.
Aldermen eventually voted 6-6 on a plan to increase base pay from about $23,000 a year to $29,250 in 2027, and to $34,500 in 2028. Irvin eventually voted to break the tie in favor of the increase, although at first he declined, seeing if aldermen could work something out they could vote for.
They could not, so after the second amendment vote ended in a 6-6 tie, Irvin said “it doesn’t seem like there is going to be a consensus.”
He said because of how hard aldermen work – Irvin was an alderman at large for 10 years before becoming mayor – they deserve some kind of increase.
“I appreciate what you all do for the city of Aurora,” he said.
Aldermen had similar difficulty arriving at a number they could live with last week, and eventually turned down a proposal for a 27% pay increase that would have taken effect in June 2027, followed by another 5% raise in 2028.
While there was a vote to reconsider the motion at the Oct. 15 Committee of the Whole meeting, it was immediately tabled to this week’s regular council meeting.
After bringing the proposal off the table, Ald. Carl Franco, 5th Ward, proposed an amendment that would increase the pay by 12% in 2027, and another 12% in 2028. He said while aldermen appeared to not support a 32% raise over two years, that would be only 24%.
It failed by a 9-3 vote.
Ald. Edward Bugg, 9th Ward, who had proposed the original 27% raise, proposed another amendment for a raise of about 17% to $30,000 in 2027, and by another 15.7% to $35,000 in 2028. The vote on that was 6-6, and Irvin declined to break the tie vote, asking aldermen to go back and seek something they could support.
This time, Bugg suggested to raise pay to $29,250 in 2027 and $34,500 in 2028. The vote was again 6-6, with Irvin this time breaking the tie in favor of the measure. The council had to take another vote to approve the pay raise, again 6-6, again with the tie being broken in favor by Irvin.
In all three tie votes, the break down was: Bugg; Alds. Juany Garza, 2nd Ward; Brandon Tolliver, 7th Ward; Patty Smith, 8th Ward; Shweta Baid, 10th Ward; and John Laesch, at large, in favor; and Franco; Alds. Dan Barreiro, 1st Ward; Ted Mesiacos, 3rd Ward; William Donnell, 4th Ward; Michael Saville, 6th Ward; and Ron Woerman, at large, against.
The council has been looking at compensation for aldermen for weeks, after paying for a study from consultant Korn Ferry showing where Aurora’s pay stands compared to other, similar cities.
The study showed Aurora aldermen are paid about 44% to 54% of what City Council members are paid in comparable cities.
Bugg, as he had before, maintained that cities such as Richmond, Virginia, and Akron, Ohio, which are comparable to Aurora in population size and form of government, have raised their aldermen’s pay to $45,000 a year.
“The metrics are not perfect, but the company we hired did give us metrics,” said Laesch. “The aldermen did need to be brought up.”
But Franco said it was “disingenuous” to suggest aldermen only make $23,000 a year now, because they also get $90 a meeting, which can bring them up, depending on how many meetings they attend, to about $30,000 or $31,000.
Mesiacos said he considered the metrics as being derived internally by aldermen themselves, instead of using an outside entity to study compensation, as was done years ago.
“These are just coming from us,” he said.
slord@tribpub.com
