The Meridian City Council voted Tuesday to raise pay for incoming council members citing the demands of the job and time requirements needed to represent their wards.

 

Councilwoman Romande Walker, who serves as council president and asked to add the raises to Tuesday’s agenda, said seats on the council are classified as part-time positions, but the job is far more time and labor intensive.

 

“It’s not part time. I’m retired and I’m working 24/7,” she said.

 

While some council members are able to fit both their duties to the city and a separate full or part-time job into their schedules, Walker said she found it exceptionally difficult prior to her retirement from education to fully commit herself the way her ward needs. At first, she said she was able to take accumulated leave time from her teaching positions but ended up taking unpaid time off once her paid leave was drained.

 

Walker proposed raising council pay to $32,000 annually, an increase of $1,000 per month. State law prohibits the council from raising its own pay, and the raises will actually go into effect when the new council takes office July 1.

 

“There’s nothing part time about this job,” Councilwoman Ty Bell Lindsey said.

 

While she agrees with Walker that serving on the City Council is a full-time role and supported additional pay for those serving on the council, Lindsey said she wanted more time to review the situation and reach a decision.

 

City Attorney Will Simmons said waiting to vote on the raises presents a challenge of its own. In addition to restrictions on raising their own pay, the law requires council members vote on any raises for future council members at least 90 days before the general election, which is set for June 3. Waiting to take action at a future meeting will put the council past that 90 day deadline, he said.

 

Councilman Joe Norwood Jr. said the current council has been able to provide several raises for city employees throughout its term, and he supports the council getting a similar raise. Increasing pay to $32,000 is a much larger raise than what city employees received, he said, and a proportionate increase would be to increase council pay to $27,000, a raise of $7,000.

 

Norwood’s motion was approved by an unanimous vote, making the pay for incoming council members $27,000 annually beginning July 1.

 

Mayor Jimmie Smith said he wants to see pay for all city employees rise to be competitive on a regional level. A study performed by the John C. Stennis Institute of Government & Community Development gathered data on local government salaries in similar cities, showing Meridian’s pay is under the average.

 

With the 90 day deadline on pay changes leading up to the election, Smith asked the council to raise pay for the mayor’s position to $100,000 per year, which is in line with what the Stennis study found. The change would also go into effect beginning with the start of the new mayoral term on July 1.

 

The request died after no council member made a motion to take up the request.

 

Councilman Dwayne Davis said the mayor and council agree that pay for city employees needs to go up, but the council is also tasked with making sure the city’s financial health is cared for as well. Pay raises are recurring costs, and it is part of the council’s job to make sure those costs are covered, he said.

 

Legislative Funds

 

With the mayoral and council term coming to a close, funds held by the City Council could become an issue if they are not distributed to departments as originally planned in the budget, Smith said.

 

At the beginning of the 2025 fiscal year, which started Oct. 1, council members voted to move $5 million to its legislative fund for safekeeping. At the time, the council cited larger purchases with yet-to-be-confirmed plans and wanted to protect taxpayer funds from frivolous or rushed spending. Returning the funds to departments requires a budget amendment.

 

As with pay raises, Simmons said state law also limits what outgoing public officials can do budget wise in the final three months of their term including limits on budget amendments. The council could run into trouble moving money out of its legislative fund while complying with the law, he said.

 

State law also puts limitations on what new council members can do, restricting them from certain budget actions for around a month, Simmons said, which could tie up money stored in the legislative fund for even longer.

 

“You’ve really got a four month period where it’s really difficult to move money around within the budget,” he said.

 

Smith told council members they will need to put the funding back in departments’ budgets before the restrictions go into effect April 1 or lose the ability to spend it at all.