Wichita City Council could put term limit changes, pay raises on future ballot

Wichita’s City Council members decided not to vote Tuesday to increase their own term limits, citing a strong negative reaction from voters.

But that doesn’t mean the issue is dead. In February, the term-limit extension for the mayor and City Council members could come back to the bench, and it could likely include other historically unpopular proposed changes.

Like City Council pay raises.

Those raises would be on top of a 6.3% raise council members have received since last August. City council members’ annual salaries now stand at $44,362.86.

Wichita’s mayor and City Council members are limited to two consecutive four-year terms. Tuesday’s chartered ordinance would have extended that to three terms.

The mayor is a full-time position with a $99,816.29 annual salary, while council members are part-time positions. They also get a $200-a-month car allowance and a $600-a-year phone allowance.

“I don’t know of any council member that works less than 40 hours a week,” council member Brandon Johnson said Tuesday. “So as everyone’s thinking about this discussion, think about that classification as well as the salary that goes with it so that we can get folks who are interested in running for office to not have to work two or three jobs to be a council member.

“Since this is going to happen in February, I would just love for everyone to consider all this discussion.”

The measure on Tuesday’s agenda that was pushed back would have allowed incumbent mayors and City Council members to run for a third consecutive term, instead of the two four-year terms allowed by an existing law passed by voters in 1991.

“The public provided a lot of feedback or comments, and the message is pretty clear that no decision should be made without a public vote (on a ballot question),” Vice Mayor Jeff Blubaugh said.

Blubaugh had asked for a council vote to extend term limits. Because the proposed ordinance didn’t eliminate term limits, Blubaugh said Friday that he thought a City Council vote would be appropriate.

By Tuesday morning, that had changed.

Activists had started a petition that garnered about 300 signatures in 24 hours. Dozens of disgruntled Wichitans of all political stripes showed up to the meeting ready to speak against the term limit change.

But before the council was set to discuss the measure, Blubaugh asked for it to be tabled until February, after Mayor-elect Brandon Whipple is sworn into office.

“Knowing how passionate the public is about term limits, it might be a good opportunity to have a discussion with the county as well, as there currently is no term limits with the county commission,” he said.

Blubaugh said a special election on term limits would cost about $100,000. That’s more than he’s comfortable spending, he said, “just to find out if we want to go forward with term limits or not.”

The council unanimously approved delaying the decision indefinitely.

“I haven’t seen paper fold that well,” Christopher Parisho said of the council’s decision to delay the term-limit decision.

Parisho said the timing of the proposed change is suspect because an election just occurred a month ago and the question could have been put on the ballot then. He ran against Blubaugh in District 4 and said he thinks if Blubaugh had pushed for it before the election the outcome might have been different.

“This is the exact kind of thing that made me run against him,” Parisho said. “He’s not connected to the voters.”

Blubaugh has said the timing was right because it came right after Mayor Jeff Longwell was defeated by Whipple, meaning Longwell’s vote wouldn’t pose a conflict. Blubaugh has said from the time the change was proposed that he would support putting it on a ballot but wasn’t sure it was necessary.

Higher pay?

Whipple, who starts as mayor in January and attended Tuesday’s council meeting as an audience member, said he’s happy with the council’s decision to wait.

“It needs to be part of a bigger discussion,” Whipple said. “Not just on term limits but also council members’ status. There’s even some discussion out there about whether we should have more members of the council.”

“So if we’re going to talk about changing the chartered ordinance (on term limits), I think it’s important that we open up more to a community discussion and see if there are any other ideas out there,” Whipple said.

Johnson, who said he’s not in favor of increasing term limits, said council members sometimes work more than 50 hours a week, but receive a part-time salary. He said he would like any further discussions of term limits to include a larger discussion of pay raises and status changes for council members.

Last August, the City Council adopted an ordinance establishing their salaries at $41,717 and the mayor’s salary at $93,863. But each December they are eligible to receive a 2.5% merit-based increase and a mandatory 1.5% cost of living increase.

Johnson said City Council members should be classified as full-time employees and make between $55,000 and $65,000 a year.

“It would make us more competitive for folks who are qualified but don’t want to quit their jobs because they make more than what we make now,” Johnson said.

If the council does move forward with term limit extensions, Johnson said he would like to add language that truly limits council members to three terms.

The way the law is written now, council members can serve as many two-term stints as voters will allow, as long as they take a term off in between or switch between being a City Council member and mayor.

Johnson said if it goes to three terms, that should be it. Council members or mayors should then be disallowed from serving on the council after a third term.

Johnson said he’s also in favor of discussing what the community thinks is the appropriate number of City Council members. Right now, the city has six City Council members elected by district and one mayor elected at-large.

Population per City Council member varies widely across the country, from 6,278 in Albany, New York, to more than 250,000 in Los Angeles, according to the National League of Cities.

“Right now, we each represent a little over 65,000 people per council member. So we should have a discussion about what is the right number. Is it too much or is it too little?”

‘They’ll see us again in February’

Wichita activist Donna Wirth, along with a group that planned to protest the term-limit extension, left Tuesday’s meeting early, chalking up the delay as a win for democracy.

“A temporary win,” Wirth said. “They’ll see us again in February.”

If the City Council had passed the chartered ordinance, Wirth said she was prepared to help gather more than 5,000 signatures necessary to put the question on the ballot.

“We were prepared to have many people talk today, but I guess they understood from our phone calls and emails that we were serious,” Wirth said.

“We believe that councils should not be voting on ordinances that only reflect benefits to them. That’s a conflict of interest,” Wirth said.

Council member James Clendenin, who is in his second term, said it’s too early to commit to running for a third term if the term-limit change passes.

“It’s way too early to say. Honestly, by the time I’m done, it will have been 10 years, and I am not opposed to stepping back and allowing someone else to take over the reins,” he said.

Clendenin said he heard “loud and clear” the message from voters in his district that City Council members shouldn’t be the ones making the term-limit decision.

“I had community members that normally just talk to me about things going on in their neighborhoods reach out and ask for this decision to be put on the ballot, not made by the body of people that benefit from it. And I agree with that,” Clendenin said.

As for the number of City Council members and salaries, Clendenin said he’s not sure where he stands on those issues without first hearing more from the public and his fellow council members. He said it might be time for some fundamental changes to the city council.

“When the chartered ordinances that we have now were passed, the expectations on council members was much different than it is today. There’s a much bigger demand on our time and being able to give the amount of time that’s required, as well as having in some cases a couple jobs on top of it.”

This story was originally published December 10, 2019 at 4:29 PM.