The Van Wert County Courthouse

Sunday, Feb. 16, 2025

Council to discuss raises next week

SCOTT TRUXELL/independent editor

One week from today, Monday, February 10, is when members of Van Wert City Council will meet to discuss a potential increase in council salaries.

The discussion will take place in executive session, after administrative and council reports and the business portion of the agenda. The closed door discussion, which is permissible under Ohio’s Sunshine Laws, was suggested by Councilwoman Jana Ringwald, who chairs council’s Finance Committee. During last Monday’s meeting, she noted she’s still gathering data and plans to present it at the February 10 meeting.

Members of Van Wert City Council will soon begin discussing council raises. No immediate decision will be made but if ultimately enacted, raises wouldn’t take effect until the next term. Van Wert independent file photo

“My thought on the executive session is I thought the members of council might be a little more forthcoming if they had the privacy of an executive session,” she explained.

As an alternative, Ringwald suggested a 30 minute “Council of the Whole” meeting before the February 10 regular meeting, but council members agreed to the executive session. Councilman At-Large Jeff Kallas said he liked the idea of an executive session and a Council of the Whole meeting at a future date for public discussion.

No final decision will be made on February 10, and if members of council eventually vote to raises salaries, those increases wouldn’t take effect until the next term, which begins in 2026. All eight council seats will be up for election this November.

Each ward and council at-large representative is paid $4,900 annually, while the council president makes $5,500 per year.

The discussion of raises is starting early this year because the last time council members broached the subject, in 2023, it was late and came to an abrupt end with no increases. That year, the discussion begin during the early portion of summer and stretched into the early part of October. In between, by a 4-3 vote, council approved increasing annual salaries from $4,900 to $6,100 for ward and at-large members and from $5,500 to $6,700 for the council president.

However, Mayor Ken Markward vetoed the increase, which later led to a revised proposal of $600 raises, which would have taken salaries to $5,500 for ward and at-large representatives and $6,000 for the council president.

By then, a third and final vote on the salary increases would have come after the November election, which Law Director John Hatcher said could have presented a problem with the Ohio Ethics Commission. That led First Ward Councilman Jeff Agler to suggest dropping the matter altogether, a notion quickly seconded by Kallas.

After that, then-City Auditor Martha Balyeat admonished council and said things would have been different if council would have handled the process earlier in the year.

“Council is the ones that chose to wait so long,” she said in October of 2023. “If you would have done this earlier in the year it probably would have passed. You wouldn’t have run into the time frame definitely…if this would have happened in January or February it would have passed and been done.”

Hatcher later termed it “an incredibly awkward situation.”

POSTED: 02/02/25 at 10:04 pm. FILED UNDER: News