By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

                City voters gave the Williston City Council and the mayor a pay raise in a March election this year but confusion over how the board should implement the pay increase wasn’t settled until Tuesday’s council meeting.

            City Attorney Fred Koberlein said he would prepare an ordinance that would allow the council to ratify the pay raise and begin receiving the money in June.

            Voters approved doubling the pay of the mayor and council president from $250 to $500 per month and doubling the pay of other council members from $200 to $400 monthly in the March referendum.

            The council remains among the lowest paid elected municipal boards in the county. It won’t be the highest paid city elected board in Levy County with the raises.

            Some in city government thought the city election had given the council the right to begin receiving the raises, but as it turns out the election merely amended the city charter to set the maximum raises.

            Koberlein said an ordinance would have to be placed on the agenda of two separate board meetings to give the public opportunity to comment on the raises. The council can then officially approve their raises by adopting an ordinance.

            But there had been confusion about the process of implementing the raises ahead of Tuesday’s council meeting.

            Council President Debra Jones said she was asked to sign off on the raises when someone presented her with a personnel action form for that purpose. She wouldn’t sign it.

            “I did not feel comfortable signing it,” she said. “We have since found out in talking to the city attorney and with the city clerk and with some research the mayor’s done – I’ll give him credit for a lot of that – he’s been in the ordinance books; we have discovered it should not be a personnel action form at all – it should be an ordinance.”

            Koberlein said the voter-approved city charter amendment providing the maximum salaries of council members and the mayor has gone to the state for review.

            “We still need an ordinance. It’s always been the case that an ordinance has to be passed to give the public two opportunities to review what the council wants to do with its own salaries, so we still have to bring an ordinance back for the first reading at the next meeting,” Koberlein said.

            Koberlein said the council on Tuesday night actually have the option of taking the maximum salaries approved by voters – $400 for regular council members and $500 for the mayor and council president – or accepting less.

            “It’s anywhere up to the maximum,” Koberlein said “It can be lower. If we really get a no-government type of council in the next few years, they may say we want to lower it down to a dollar, as ridiculous  as that sounds, but you can go anywhere up to the maximum.”

            Koberlein said the city’s staff administrators wanted guidance on what the council wanted to be paid.

            Jones favored going with the pay raise approved by the voters in the March referendum — $400 for regular council members and $500 for the mayor and council president.

            “Since we presented that to the people and that’s what the people voted on, that’s what I’m good with,” Jones said.

            “I’m going with what the people voted on,” added Councilman Michael Cox.

            “That’s the right thing,” said Councilwoman Marguerite Robinson.

            Those numbers will be written into the ordinance and discussed at the next two council meetings.

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City of Williston Regular Meeting May 4, 2021; Posted May 6, 2021