“The fact that the townships make twice or four times more than me, it doesn’t matter to me,” Middletown City Council Vice Mayor Dan Picard said. “I certainly didn’t run for the job because of the pay.”
Unlike city council and mayoral salaries, trustees’ salaries are set by state law, based on each township’s annual budget.
Those serving Butler County’s largest townships — Fairfield Twp., Liberty Twp. and West Chester Twp. — are compensated at the highest of amount at $20,568 per year because the budgets there each exceed $10 million.
When benefits packages are added, overall compensation for trustees rises. Not all trustees choose township benefits packages, but are eligible for limited reimbursement for coverage obtained elsewhere.
Meanwhile, residents in Middletown and Hamilton vote on pay raises for city council members. In those cities, council members haven’t gotten a raise for decades. Cities also aren’t required to pay out benefits to their council members.
“You don’t run for office in Hamilton, Ohio, for the pay,” Hamilton Mayor Pat Moeller said.
Council members in Hamilton earn $1,500 annually; $1,200 of which is meant to compensate for gas and supplies a member uses on the job, according to Carla Fiehrer, the Vice Mayor for the city of approximately 63,000 residents.
Large differences in pay between township trustees and city councils is a trend throughout Ohio, according to Susan Cave, the director for the Ohio Municipal League, which represents villages and cities. She said trustees tend to play the role of both administrators and legislators for townships, while council members act as just legislators and mayors or city managers work as administrators, for their cities.
“I agree with my members when they say that given the size of some of the budgets, council members make a whole lot less… that has always been a bit of an issue with some municipal officials,” Cave said. “The structure of the governments are so different that when you make those comparisons, you have to do that with the understanding that it’s a totally different structure.”
Trustees agree that they take on different responsibilities from council members who govern big cities with a larger staff.
In Reily Twp., a township of 2,600 people where trustees earn $10,288 annually, trustees mow the grass or plow snow when workloads pile up too high for the township’s three full-time staffers.
Denny Conrad, who has served on the trustee board for 32 years, said he and other trustees have mowed township property and plowed streets during blizzards. He said he’s even dug graves in the township’s cemetery.
“We’re more rural, we probably stay more involved with our workers,” Conrad said. “We’ll pitch in…with just little things that come up.”
Most trustees end up working 40 hours during a week when meetings are held, according to Christine Matacic, a Liberty Twp. trustee. Much of that time, Matacic said, is spent reading up on new proposals for the upcoming board meeting.
“Townships tend to have less staff so the trustees get in and do a lot more hands-on stuff,” Matacic said. “There’s a lot of that stuff that people don’t hear about that we do.”
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