Congratulations! Just when you’ve worked hard enough to earn a raise at your 60-hour a week, high-stress, dead-end job, City Council has a surprise for you — you can give them a raise, too! That’s right. As of the December 10 meeting, City Council has successfully given themselves a 50% pay increase, despite the opposition of nearly everyone, including Mayor Stephen R. Reed.

Introduced on November 23, the proposal conveniently played second fiddle to Mayor Reed’s presentation of the 2000 budget. Content to stay in the shadows, council let the heat fall upon the budget and took the opportunity to approve themselves the raise.

What’s even more convenient is that, while the budget had until December 31 to be approved by council, the raise had only until December 13, meaning that only one city council meeting was scheduled before the deadline, and meaning, of course, that the public had little or no time to officially express their outrage and concern.

With that in mind, the council members came to the meeting and voted, anyway, voting 5-2 in favor of overriding Mayor Reed’s veto, starting future mayors at $74,000 — an increase of nearly $30,000 in comparison to Reed’s starting salary — and awarding themselves a pay increase of some 50%, making their 2002 salary total $15,000.

The raise, which was originally vetoed by Reed on December 3, changes the compensation of the council, effective January 1, 2002. While the compensation of the Mayor is set to go into effect January 1, 2000, Reed is not affected by the decision, as his current $72,000 salary was already scheduled to increase to $74,000 at year’s end.

At the heated meeting — moved from the previous Tuesday to noon on a day when the Mayor was out of town — council was met with opposition from both the public and their fellow members, including Councilman Patrick Gallagher.

"I’ve been against this pay increase for council since the inception of it," said Gallagher. "…This office should be served for the prestige and the honor … it should have nothing to do with salary."

If Gallagher’s comments lacked support from his peers, his sentiments were more than echoed from the public in attendance.

According to David Wise, speaking for the Summit Terrace Neighborhood Association, the money being used by the council for the pay raise could just as effectively be used to correct some of the problems facing both his neighborhood and the city as a whole. "The City of Harrisburg is in a precarious position, as the Mayor has already pointed out," said Wise, who, after being asked by Council President Richard House to end his speech, was obviously disappointed that his time at the podium was limited — mumbling defeatedly as he returned to his chair, "I don’t understand why any of us are coming down here …"

For his part, House empathized with the public outcry, but offered his own spin on the topic. "Anytime any elect body gives themselves a raise there is always a negative feeling out there from the general populace," he said. "People look at ourselves like we’re giving ourselves a raise … well, we’re the only ones that can do this."

On the issue of the pay raise itself, House defended council’s decision, claiming that, among other things, it was done for the future of the office.

"This is no longer a borough council here … as time progresses, as time changes, we have to change with that time. [With the pay increase] … we’ll have more people involved in city politics, we’ll have more qualified people involved in politics."

"This is the Capital City. We’re going into the new Millennium," House continued, "we felt that the office of council deserved the raise."

True. But with the pay increase, the part-time council voted itself a salary in the realm of the two biggest cities in the state, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh — both of whom have a full-time board.

Now that the bill has been passed and election ballots long cast, there is little harm that can be made over the public’s need to place blame, although it can be speculated that city residents, many of whom are also in an uproar over the impending tax increase currently supported by Mayor Reed, have more than enough blame to go around — even if House didn’t see it that way. "It’s not a matter of anyone’s wrong or anyone’s right," he said. "It’s about doing the right thing and that’s what we did today, council just did what we thought was right."

Nothing personal, no hard feelings, it was just about doing the ‘right’ thing. Quite a convincing thought, if it weren’t for Councilwoman Peggy Grove and Councilman Patrick Gallagher doing the ‘right’ thing on their own.

"I think that council is being foolish for throwing things away," said Gallagher "… it’s not a good sign that council would be so selfish … it’s not right, it’s just not right."

One can only guess that the residents of Harrisburg are thinking the same thing.