The South Dakota Municipal League list list of city commission salaries is dated June 2007. (The Mitchell Daily Republic ran the story back on Dec. 14, but the other papers saved it for holiday filler.) Here's what the city commissioners in our Class I municipalities get paid:
| City | Pay |
| Brandon | $16,000 |
| Sioux Falls | $15,425 |
| Huron | $14,502 |
| Rapid City | $12,360 |
| Spearfish | $9,500 |
| Pierre | $9,082 |
| Aberdeen | $8,500 |
| Mitchell | $7,700 |
| Sturgis | $7,375 |
| Madison | $7,200 |
| Watertown | $5,400 |
| Brookings | $3,600 |
| Vermillion | $3,000 |
| Yankton | $2,800 |
Obviously the guys who won the recall election in Yankton weren't in it for the money.
Madison Commissioner Dan Bohl estimates he puts in about 10 hours of work a week for the city. So let's see: quarter-time job at $7,200... if that were full-time, multiply by 4... Madison's city commission pay is comparable to $28,800 for a full-time job. No pittance, but no extravangance, either. Mayor Hexom has to attend more meetings and pancake feeds, so he gets $15,000 a year. Our state legislators get $6,000 for the session, plus $110 a day for expenses. Multiply their session pay by 6 and you get pay comparable to $36,000 a year if legislating were a full-time job.
Chuck Clement's article in Monday's MDL (sorry, no link -- dead tree only) gets quotes from Bohl and fellow commissioner Mechelle Nordberg. Both talk about the fair amount of work they do. Nordberg also notes that the last time commissioners got a salary increase was "several years" before she joined the board in 2002:
I think the last time that they increased the salaries, it was an attempt to encourage more people to run for seats on the commission [Nordberg, cited in Chuck Clement, "Madison Commissioners Fall into Lower Half of Municipal Pay Scales," Madison Daily Leader, 2007.12.31].
Clement doesn't connect any dots past that statement: no assessment of whether more people ran for the commission after that vaguely remembered raise, no follow-up on whether big-spending Brandon, Sioux Falls, or Huron see more people pounding at the doors of City Hall to run for seats. And most tellingly, no direct question of either commissioner on whether they think they should be paid more. Bohl and Nordberg are too smart (and evidently, Clement is too gentle) to touch that one.
The readers of the Madville Times are plenty smart but certainly not gentle. What do you think? Are Nordberg and Bohl angling for a raise? If it's been a decade-plus since the last raise, do they have one coming?
The only two cities that are of similar size are Sturgis and Vermillion, and if those cities meet weekly, we seem to be compensating fairly. Nordberg and Johnson are telling people they are not running again, so now may be a good time to ask for an increase. Maybe encourage new faces, although I'd like to see both of them for at least another term. They do a good job.
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