Members of Colorado Springs’ City Council are paid $100 a week. Do they need a raise?

At the center of every city are its city council members. 

They make some of the biggest decisions shaping the city, from approving the city budget and deciding how to allocate tax dollars, to much smaller ones, like choosing where to install a new traffic light or designate a new park.

In Colorado Springs, the nine-member City Council bears a considerable duty making such decisions that will affect nearly a half-million residents in Colorado’s second most populous city. 

They are also the lowest paid council members among the state’s top 10 largest cities. Colorado Springs council members are paid an annual stipend of $6,250. After tax, that comes to about $100 a week for a job that often takes up 40 to 50 hours a week. 

“It definitely needs a change, for so many reasons. It needs to be a living wage to make sure that we have a diverse council,” outgoing Councilmember Yolanda Avila said. 

Avila, who has served for the past eight years, said she wants to see different kinds of people on council, including younger people and those with growing families. 

But with the current salary and time commitment, constituents in her district have said that’s not possible. A young woman in her district running for Tuesday’s City Council elections had to drop out after the potential candidate realized she would have had to take a $15,000 pay cut from her job in order to have the time to serve on city council, Avila said. 

“Most of us, a lot of the members, are independently wealthy, or have their own businesses, or are retired, so you don’t have the same day-to-day challenges that up-and-coming people are going through,” she said. 

Colorado Springs’ council members’ salary also falls short of cities across the county with similar populations to Colorado Springs, which as of 2023, had 488,664 residents.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, home to about 482,000 people, council members make $32,455 a year. In Omaha, Nebraska, with a population of about 483,000, most council members are paid $44,211 while the council president makes 20% more, or just over $53,000. And in Kansas City, Missouri, with a population of 510,000, city council members’ salary is $87,000.

For an increase to happen in Colorado Springs, the measure would have to be placed on the ballot for the voters to decide. The last time that happened was in 2013 and voters overwhelmingly defeated a measure to increase their salary to $48,000 from the $6,250 stipend. 

“I don’t think people get that city council people impact their daily lives,” Avila said. “From the minute they step outside and get on a sidewalk or in their car on a road intersection or when they’re calling police and fire.”

For any change to be made to city council salaries, Avila said it will take some education. 

“We need a two-year dedicated education campaign where people really learn what the city provides, is able to provide, and how much dedication and discipline a council member needs to make sure that we’re an effective city that provides a high quality of life,” she said.

All in a day’s work 

Visit Colorado Springs’ website and you’ll find the packed agenda for City Council meetings scheduled for each month. Technically, they start at 9 a.m. and can stretch late into the night.

“As you can imagine, there’s a lot of work that goes on before that and after,” current councilman and council president Randy Helms said during a meeting with former council members hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Pikes Peak Region earlier this year. 

But the work by your average city council member expands far beyond city hall.

Helms also serves on several committees, including the Airport Advisory Commission, the Colorado Springs Urban Renewal Authority, Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority, the Southern Rail Commission and the Law Enforcement Transparency and Advisory Commission. He’s invited to dinners, gives speeches at community events and meets with constituents throughout the week. 

Colorado Springs city council members also serve on the Utilities Board and govern Colorado Springs Utilities, which provides electricity, natural gas, water and wastewater services across the Pikes Peak region. 

“There are times when you have to look at it as a job that you’re serving your community. But in America, typically, people do not want to work for nothing and to be honest, $6,250 a year, to me, is nothing,” said Helms, a retired Air Force colonel.

“It costs me more than $6,000 a year to drive to city hall every day, to drive out to the airport to the Airport Advisory Commission once a month, sometimes twice, to drive to the different parts of the city to go meet with people … and to go to the different boards and commissions that I’m on.” 

Richard Skorman, a former four-term city council member and president, said during the League of Women Voters meeting that he met with 300 to 500 residents, in person or by phone, each month about city issues.

Skorman, who owns Poor Richard’s bookstore in downtown Colorado Springs, said he had to pay people fulltime to run the restaurant and toy store, instead of managing it himself. His wife also helped at his business during his second term. 

“I started adding up in my mind all of the different times I had paid people to replace me in our businesses and it was probably half to three-quarters of a million dollars that I spent,” Skorman said. “I’m not begrudging it. It was a great honor.”

He left the council in 2022 to devote his time to his business, which he wasn’t sure would survive after being closed for 18 months during the pandemic. 

Skorman said he felt the low pay for council members posed a barrier to having a council representative of the city and supported a salary that at least met the minimum cost of living in Colorado Springs at around $46,000 a year.

“It needs to be enough so maybe younger people, people that are minorities, people that don’t have the ability to work for $3 an hour could be on council,” he said. 

On the other side of the coin, if the city pays too much, council members could be influenced by the money, and winning re-election, to make decisions in their best interest rather than the city’s, he said.

Tim Leigh, who served on the City Council from 2010 to 2012, said he served during a very “critical time for the city” with decisions that continue to impact the Pikes Peak region.

“But it was very contentious,” he said. “A lot of arguments, a lot of personal assaults at the time. A lot of abuse for $6,200 a year.” 

Increasing the salary could bring in a broader base of candidates, Leigh said. At the same time, it could welcome candidates who may have less experience.

“If you open it up for salaries, all of a sudden you’re going to have a lot of people coming out of the woodwork,” Leigh said. “So the idea of a salary for a lot of people, that’s a very attractive idea, but just realize if you pay salaries, you’re going to get a whole crop of different people who have no experience and no business being in those chairs to our city’s detriment.”

He said he supported increasing council members’ stipend, but disagreed with paying them salaries. 

“The citizens are ultimately going to get to decide what they want to pay for,” Leigh said. 

Pay for elected officials varies, city to city

Pay for elected officials across the state varies and is influenced by a range of factors, including politics and cost of living from city to city. 

At the state level, lawmakers are paid about $42,000 a year for their work at the Capitol, placing them in the middle of the pack compared with their counterparts across the U.S. 

In Colorado Springs, like many other cities in Colorado, the city council sets the mayor’s salary. In 2023, the Colorado Springs City Council unanimously voted to increase the mayor’s salary by $15,000 to $129,740. 

El Paso County commissioners are paid even more. As mandated by a set of laws, the commissioners make $150,991 a year. The annual salaries were set using recommendations from the “County Elected Officials’ Salary Commission,” an independent commission created and later repealed by the General Assembly. Legislation is needed to move counties to a different category to get higher or lower salaries. 

In Denver, City Council members receive a full-time salary, unlike almost every other council member serving Colorado cities, and make a salary of more than $100,000 a year. 

In Aurora, the city code states that the mayor and city council salaries must be modified annually equal to the cost of living increase or decrease. Council members currently make $22,782 a year and receive an annual car allowance of $9,126 and an expense allowance of $4,320 per year, according to a city spokesperson.

And in Fort Collins, voters passed an amendment in 2022 that set the pay for the mayor and council members as a percentage of the city’s median income. Council members in Fort Collins earn 50% of the area median income.

When current Fort Collins council member Kelly Ohlson was first elected in 1983, he was paid $100 a month. As mayor a few years later, he earned $125 a month, still without benefits. Council member pay was adjusted each year based on the consumer price index and was at about $893 a month in 2022, when council members approved a ballot measure that asked voters whether to increase council member pay and give them benefits, the Coloradan reported. 

The measure passed with 62% of the vote, the newspaper reported.

“It was literally a four-decade thing,” Ohlson said of council members’ current compensation of $41,600 a year, plus health care benefits.

As far as money goes, Ohlson said the money spent on the six council members is “decimal dust” for a city of its size.

“If you have more choices for who you elect, you’ll probably get a stronger council that will make wise financial decisions that involve millions or tens of millions of dollars versus worrying if somebody’s getting a few thousands more than they were before,” he said.

Ohlson said he expects the higher salary and benefits to attract a broader range of candidates with diverse viewpoints to November’s city council race and beyond.

“I’m 100% convinced,” he said. “I’m not 99%, I’m 100%. Sometimes things take awhile.”