Ketchum, Idaho, residents last year booed down their city council’s attempt to give themselves giant raises, and so those electeds labor today at the wages they last set for themselves in 2009.
That council continues to work at an annual pay of $28,000 a year, which remains more than most of their ski town compatriots across the West. They wanted $70,000. Their mayor makes $50,000 — below only Park City’s $55,000 mayor before his raise to $116,000.
“What’s wrong with you?” was one of the kinder comments before Ketchum’s council backed off.
Park City residents took to rather quieter grousing at the podium in the council chambers Thursday before the City Council’s ultimately snappy 4-1 vote and we’re done with that, end of meeting.
They’d doubled their pay all at once. Councilors will earn $58,000 annually after July 1.
Aspen’s mayor gets by with $39,000, last raised in 2020, and Vail’s mayor makes do with $20,400 since the last raise in 2023. Lake Tahoe mayors are paid between $10,000 and $15,000 since their last raises in 2022. Most ski town mayors are around there.
Mayors of big cities like Phoenix ($103,000), Dallas ($80,000), San Antonio ($87,000) make less now than Park City’s mayor.
Better this way to be the mayor of Los Angeles at $300,000, Denver at $200,000, Salt Lake City at $220,000.
All will tell you they are seriously underpaid for what they do. Look at all the meetings they attend, the emails they have to answer, all the elevated thinking they carry out, along with the devotion and experience and expertise they bring. Why, there’s barely time for their day jobs or retirement.
What’s going on here? Big city or small, compensation lies at the core of competing philosophies about elected service at the municipal level.
The ski town councils originally were set up for citizen leaders who gather weekly or every other week to make the big picture decisions and offer the guidance the city employees need. These were envisioned, and mostly still are, as part-time responsibilities voters elected them to carry out.
As the towns grew into world-class entities to match their ski hills, the jobs got more complicated, demanding more of the citizen leaders’ time. So these positions became more professionalized, and they came to see themselves as politicians in the nonpejorative definition who must take on some or a lot of what had been left to the municipal staff to work out.
I will say here, too, that in this case the Park City Council was not given a particularly thoughtful or well-researched recommendation to jack up their pay beyond recognition. At least not compared to their actual peers across the West. Comparing to Summit County basically alone is no comparison at all. That’s just keeping up with the Joneses, who may do something else entirely.
If Wasatch Back councils are the comparison, though, there’s Wasatch County with their councilors paid in the $40Ks. Or Heber City, approaching three times the size of Park City, whose mayor got a raise in 2025 to $25,000. There’s that.
Councilor Ed Parigian should not be left up at the dais googling Jackson, Wyoming’s council pay while a staff member outlines a pay raise recommendation.
Frankly, none of the council should have voted yay or nay to this at first blush.
I cringed for all of them talking about how hard they work for so little. Sure, tell that to the school teachers, the bartenders, the nonprofit laborers. I’ve had a long second career in small-town journalism. Cry me a river.
Even Councilor Bill Ciraco, speechifying about life’s hardships before his gold strike came in, left me faintly nauseous. And he voted against the raise.
There is no real evidence that candidates have stopped themselves from running because of income. The counter to the pay matters argument is do you really want candidates running because they see an opportunity to make a better living as councilors? That one should be thought through just a little more. In every council race there are normal people running. Whether they win the votes is another matter entirely.
Besides, the issue for councilors and mayors is wisdom of decisions, along with the question of how much has the work truly swept over them like a tide and how much have citizen leaders poofed up their jobs beyond their actual roles.
There is a city manager, city attorneys, staffing to the relative gills to run the daily functions of the city. I might argue the council has gotten maybe a little too deep into the woodwork, and not necessarily to the benefit of the city or its citizens.
In any case, this raises valid questions about the purpose of a council that every other ski town has answered a different way. That alone is worthy of a little more discussion than racing to a vote with the first sketchy recommendation.
I was not persuaded, and listen, I’m a huge fan of this council. But this was, well, it was just dumb, frankly.
I don’t believe they even knew the mayor already was the highest paid of all the ski towns in the West. I don’t believe they knew the councilors already were right there too. I don’t believe they’ve given nearly enough thought to the citizen legislator model their town and every other ski town was built upon.
A few minutes of whining how hard they work or used to work does not cover giving themselves a raise, never mind a prudent one with steps in the future, maybe steps that kick in for future elected council members. They pretty much just went straight to more than doubling their pay. Does that make sense?
Not 5%. Not 10%. Doubling. More than doubling.
As much as anything, this might show how wealthy this community has become. Rearing up to keep teachers and firefighters from being able to live in the town they serve — yeah, I’m laying it thick — is one sign of this.
The other is either not paying attention at all or thinking about council compensation no deeper than the councilors have.
Citizens in Ketchum, still with the second-best-paid mayor and council, roared loud enough last year to stop it. Colorado ski towns are engaged like that, too. I know from experience.
The Park City way to professionalize the council and mayor’s office may well be the best new path for all the ski towns from here. We certainly are showing leadership of a kind here.
I do wish it were more thoughtful, which is to say at all thoughtful. I wish they stepped up raises with time in some thoughtful way. I wish there were a thoughtful evaluation of the citizen legislator vs. professional politician means of governing a ski town. I wish they hadn’t been in a headlong rush to just vote and get this over with.
A raise sure, even a nice one. That is palatable practically as well as philosophically. But I don’t think they’ve earned this particular raise. I saw no evidence in this discussion of any great experience or expertise brought to the office, never mind with this decision.
I saw what can only be described as a rash act.
Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745.