A proposal from Ald. Devon Reid (8th) to give each council member an extra $7,200 a year for home office and other costs seemed to die at Wednesday’s Evanston City Council Rules Committee meeting.
The city’s legal staff said the plan appeared to violate state law that requires that salaries for elected officials neither be increased nor decreased during their term of office.
Only Ald. Bobby Burns (5th) voted to introduce the proposal for discussion at the Wednesday committee meeting, and Reid’s effort to have the issue placed on the agenda for the committee’s next meeting failed to win approval.
Alds. Peter Braithwaite (2nd), Jonathan Nieuwsma (4th) and Eleanor Revelle (7th) were joined by Mayor Daniel Biss in voting against taking the issue up at the next meeting.
By that time Reid will have ended his term as Rules Committee chair and Braithwaite will have taken on that role.
Ald. Clare Kelly (1st) did not appear vote on the question and Alds. Melissa Wynne (3rd), Tom Suffredin (6th) and Cicely Fleming (9th) were not present for the vote.
Alders now earn $15,990 in cash compensation a year for their part-time job and also qualify for health insurance benefits that can cost the city as much as $25,000 per council member — depending on the insurance plan the individual alder selects.
I am at a loss to find a single initiative from Devon Reid (Ald 8th) that contributes positively to the Evanston community. His proposals are divisive (punish those with 2 cars), counter to sound economic policy (hazard pay for grocery store workers), or self-serving (throw another $7200 to alders for their home offices with!?!). Come back Ann!!!
I agree! The audacity to ask for a $7,200 raise with our city’s revenue issues!? Thankfully that’s against the law, which he apparently didn’t even check before proposing it. He fought to eliminate beach tokens which also eliminates revenue that our city needs. And he is fighting for hazard pay. Who does he think is going to pay for that? Does he think the companies are just going to give up some of their profit? No, they’re going to raise prices that Evanston shoppers will have to pay (on top of already inflated prices) whether they’re wealthy or economically struggling! He needs to think things through, think about cause and effect and do more research before making proposals. Hopefully the other alders and Mayor will have the sense to keep bad proposals from becoming policy.