The Jackson City Council held its nose and passed Mayor Tony Yarber’s $390 million budget proposal Monday night. But the vote comes with strings attached, council members warned and could be revised later this fall.
Yarber and the council came to loggerheads over several issues, including last-minute additions and the mayor’s reticence in implementing a $120,000 pay increase for city workers earning minimum wage even as he is increasing pay for three city departments by about $500,000.
The meeting grew noticeably tense when Yarber indicated that he would not move forward with a pay increase for city workers earning the minimum wage that the city council passed recently. Currently, the minimum wage for city employees mirrors the national minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Under the new plan, the wage would rise to $8.75 per hour within a year. Yarber said moving forward with the increase would throw the budget off balance.
Council members took exception to Yarber’s explanation, they said, because the mayor’s budget staffers had advised the council throughout the development of the pay-raise plan and determined that it would only cost about $120,000 a year. In addition, the council said it agreed to let the mayor “staff up” in several departments.
From 2013 to the budget passed this week, salaries in the mayor’s and chief-administrative officer’s office increased by $480,781.
“If we can pay the mayor and CAO’s office a half-million dollar increase (for salaries), then we don’t need to be paying slave wages to people who are out there filling ditches,” Ward 2 Councilman Melvin Priester Jr., who chairs the Budget Committee, told the Jackson Free Press after the meeting.
The city attorney’s office also jumped from $1.9 million in 2013 to just over $2 million under the current budget.
As an alternative to the minimum-wage raises, Yarber suggested a feasibility study be done, arguing that the council had not considered the effect of implementing the raises on vacant positions. The move seemed to blindside the six members who attended. Ward 7 Councilwoman Margaret Barrett-Simon lambasted Yarber’s refusal to implement the council’s action, which she called historic.
“If the council can be ignored on something like this, then what are we doing here?” she asked.
During the meeting, Priester offered a compromise in order to meet the legal requirement to finish the budget by Sept. 15, instructing Yarber’s administration to find a way to implement the minimum-wage hike or the council would come back later and take back salary increases now going to department heads and other top-tier staff members.
The budget passed 5-to-1. Ward 3 Councilwoman LaRita Cooper-Stokes voted no; Ward 1 Councilman Quentin Whitwell did not attend the meeting. The council can revise the budget to reflect changes through the end of the month.
That wasn’t the only bone of contention, however. Members grumbled about several last-minute changes to the already 417-page budget proposal they received on Wednesday, Aug. 20. Yesterday, on the morning they would vote on the budget, Yarber’s office sent a 25-page addendum full of expenditures that would grow the plan by about $2 million.
Members complained that they did not have enough time to fully review the documents.
“They had eight months to prepare a budget, and we had eight or nine working days,” Council President and Ward 4 Councilman De’Keither Stamps told the Jackson Free Press after the meeting of the city’s administration department.
Stamps also pointed out that the council received the budget recommendation one day before the city was required to set the millage rate for the year, which determines how much the city collects in property taxes. The rate ultimately rolled property taxes back to 2013 levels, which Stamps and Priester say equals a property tax cut of about $5 million.
Other changes that drew ire from the council included an increase in city lobbying services from $80,000 to $136,000. The budget book council members received lists $56,000 for lobbying.
Yarber said that the administration realized additional needs after the budget book was printed. He has asked the council to approve contracts to hire two lobbying firms, one to petition the state Legislature and another for Congress. Yarber had asked the council to approve a professional services contract with Hayes Dent Public Strategies last week, but the item was held.
Formerly the chief of staff for late Republican Gov. Kirk Fordice and GOP nominee for Congress in the 2nd Congressional District in 1993, Dent is one of the state’s most powerful lobbyists. Dent is also the principal owner of a firm that Jackson Mayor Tony Yarber hired during his mayoral campaign earlier this year.
Other last-minute changes to the budget included a $19,000 pay hike for deputy chief-administrative officer for external funding LaSeine Hilliard to bring her salary in line with that of her male counterparts—deputy CAOs Marshand Crisler and Aaron Banks—Yarber said. Each deputy will earn $71,838.96 per year under the amended budget.
In addition, the city clerk’s office received $27,000 more to make current part-time employees full-time with benefits as well as to provide what Yarber called “small raises” for existing clerk staffers.
This story has been updated to reflect a correction. A previous version misstated that the city attorney’s budget increased from $900,000 to more than $2 million. That department’s budget increased from $1.9 million to more than $2 million. We apologize for the error.
Previous Comments
If you can’t read between the lines of Yaber’s budget, you are just flat, plane, BLIND or ILLITERATE!! UHMM, somebody’s getting PAID and PAID BIG!!! Wonder WHO?????? Bet now you wish you had voted for Antar Lumumba – at the very least, you’d get a man working for the interest of “THE PEOPLE” and one who would have given TRUTH and not MIRRORS to TRANSPARENCY IN GOVERNMENT” One thing I can say is Thanks to Priester, Stamps and Barrett and Council President Tilman for speaking TRUTH to POWER. I PRAY you will continue to be good stewards!!!
#6721 | Author: sarahmina | Date: Sep 16 2014
Well here the real Tony Yarber comes. How many high-paid assistants does he need?? Guess the smoke screen is clearing and it’s obvious he’s not interested in directing any additional/substantial funds to the help deter crime or improve the city’s infrastructure.
#6726 | Author: hottytoddy | Date: Sep 16 2014
A lot of good, intelligent people who vouched for the mayor are quiet today. For my part I voted for Antar, but I thought Tony was a good candidate too—I never expected this. Saddened and disappointed, but the fact that we have the strongest City Council we’ve ever had is reason for hope.
#6727 | Author: Tom Head | Date: Sep 17 2014
I won’t say I told you so but…….. Tony Yarber is out for one person TONY YARBER so if anyone thought he was really going to rep for us because of all his slick Jesus talk and blah blah for the kids but didn’t bother to actually look at who he is behind all that and who he runs with. I have nothing to say about that.
#6728 | Author: multiculturegirl37 | Date: Sep 17 2014
Y’all did tell us so. You deserve credit for that.
#6729 | Author: Tom Head | Date: Sep 17 2014
Sometimes it takes money to produce. I take a wait and see approach, but results will be wanted by all the citizens of Jackson. No results, and he will be a one-term Mayor.
#6746 | Author: Turtleread | Date: Sep 17 2014
I am an Exjacksonian and I love my hometown. I would like to encourage the city to give the Mayor and opportunity to show what he is able to do. As a business professional that heads a multimillion dollar organization, it takes excellent staff to do excellent work. My friends Excellence Cost! In order for Mayor Yarber to be effective he must have superb staff. Superb is no cheap nor should it be. This is not a personality game, as I can tell that the mayor has his critics. This is BUSINESS and the main issues typically comes down to dollars and cents. Give him a chance he’s trying to build a power team that Jackson is going to need bring my dear hometown back to life…. Now, I do wholeheartedly agree with the Gladiators on the city council for putting pressure on the mayor to raise the wage of minimum wage workers. It is imperative that there be equality all the way across the board. I truly hope that the mayor would consider raising those wages as I believe God will favor the city because the leader has compassion for those who are struggling. Ride on Jackson, MS! Ride On! Thinking about Home, and wishing well.
#6772 | Author: Exjacksonian | Date: Sep 19 2014
I have tried for two days to understand how the mayor could support giving $500,000 in raises to his upper level staff members and oppose giving $122,000 in raises to the city’s minimum wage earners. It just did not make sense. And from reading this article Mayor Yarber did not give a plausible reason as to why he was against raising the minimum hourly wage. Then last night it came to me. I realized that Mayor Yarber’s main financial supporters and voters are probably business owners from wards 1 and 7. They probably told the mayor he could not raise his minimum wage workers pay to $8.75 an hour because it would put to much pressure on these business owners to raise their minimum wage workers pay to the same level. Jackson citizens must give thanks to the City Council for looking out for our interests. The Council needs to turn down the personal services contract for Hayes Dent. This appears to be payoff for the work Dent did during the Yarber campaign. If the city has one lobbyist for Washington and one for the state legislature, why does the city need another one. I must admit I had serious concerns about Yarber’s ability to be an effective mayor. Nothing has happened so far to alleviate these concerns. I shudder to think what would happen to Jackson if we did not have the City Council to protect us.
#6774 | Author: Slick | Date: Sep 19 2014
Slick, I’ve been mulling on the same question re: why he would sacrifice his administration’s political capital to sabotage a popular minimum wage increase that has been unanimously approved by the City Council and represents only 0.03% of the budget; think part of it is what you suggest, and another part of it is that the minimum wage is a live issue in the U.S. Senate campaign. By increasing the minimum wage for city workers, Jackson goes more-or-less on record as saying $7.25/hr is not a living wage. That may be a position that Yarber has been told not to express, at least not in a national election year. Tony Yarber, Ward 6 Councilman, would have voted for the minimum wage increase. I have no doubt about that. Even Yarber the candidate might have gone on record as supporting the minimum wage increase, if forced to take a position on it. (What’s more “Everyday People” than that?) So there’s something that I think has been brought to his attention about the “realities” of the mayor’s office, and whose interests he’s supposed to advocate when he holds it. It’s a conversation—or I should say a series of conversations—that every mayor has after they’re elected, and how they react to those conversations determines the general trajectory of their administration. I like Hayes Dent; he’s one of my favorite Republicans. And while I don’t agree with the argument behind using a GOP lobbyist, I can understand the rational basis for it; we have a majority-GOP legislature and majority-GOP U.S. House, so a GOP lobbyist might be able to get in some rooms a Democratic lobbyist wouldn’t. But any interaction the city has with his firm needs to be one-way; he needs to be representing the interests of the city in the legislature, not the other way around. If he can’t do that—or rather I should say if Yarber doesn’t allow him to do that, because it’s ultimately the mayor who will decide how much influence he has, and what kind—he’s the wrong choice. And in any case, the administration can’t credibly hire him now because of (a) his firm’s involvement in the mayoral race, (b) the administration’s lack of transparency re the amount of money paid to his firm in the original budget, and (c) the administration’s decision to sacrifice its mandate over the minimum wage issue.
#6777 | Author: Tom Head | Date: Sep 19 2014
An interesting comment, Tomhead. However, Hayes works for those who pay him, not the other way around. He presents options and ways of getting things done politically that would be advantageous to a Democratic Mayor in a Republican State. The Mayor will pick an option, Hayes and his firm will execute that option. The customer is in the drivers’ seat. As for the minimum wage, Yarber is swimming against the tide.
#6786 | Author: Turtleread | Date: Sep 20 2014
I encourage you to look a little deeper at the history of city government and who the players are behind this mayor. Also you might want to look at the people he is paying these high salaries to. I would technically agree that you need good, HONEST , TALENTED people, to get things done RIGHT! This one of the main reasons people are concerned! You don’t need your personal entourage but you do need a few strategic people with impeccable skills.
#6788 | Author: sarahmina | Date: Sep 20 2014