Blackfoot budget includes raise for mayor, council - East Idaho News
Blackfoot

Blackfoot budget includes raise for mayor, council

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BLACKFOOT — The Blackfoot mayor and city councilors may be getting a raise — if a draft budget is put into effect.

The 2018 fiscal budget was presented to the city council last week. It includes a 1 percent increase in the administrative budget to move the mayor’s salary from $60,000 a year to $65,000, and a council member’s pay would to $6,000 annually.

The draft was approved for publishing at the council’s meeting on July 18. It now just needs to go through public hearings.

“The general funds revenues are healthy,” Treasurer Holly Powell said. “This should not be an issue as far as covering this increase.”

Idaho law requires any increases in the salaries of mayors and council members be done during an election year. Mayor Paul Loomis and two council members Layne Gardner and Chris Jensen are up for re-election in November.

“By law, that is the only time that either the mayor’s or council’s salary can be raised,” Gardner said. “The mayor’s salary was raised to be consistent with (what) other mayors of like-size cities to Blackfoot are being paid, to make his salary more in line with what city superintendents are making, and to fairly compensate the mayor for the amount of time necessary to do the job.”

Gardner also said there hasn’t been a raise for the city council since 1993. If the council approves the budget in August, the salary increase will go into effect before the election in November. Filing to run for the mayoral office or city council begins Aug. 28 and ends Sept. 9.

Also included in the budget is a loan from the Department of Environmental Quality.

“Without including the loan, the overall budget decreases 4.5 percent,” Gardner said. “We have to include the loan, but we don’t actually start using that money until construction starts next spring. The money to repay the loan comes from an enterprise fund (water and sewer fees) that can’t be used for anything else and not from property taxes or from a bond issue.”

The total amount of the FY 2018 budget is $30 million. The council plans to hold a public hearing regarding the budget at its next council meeting Aug. 1 — it is the public’s opportunity to voice opinions of the budget. The final approval of the budget will be Aug. 15.

“Mayor Loomis goes out of his way to make sure the public has a chance to be involved. I agree with him,” Gardner said.

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