The revelation that the mayor asked for and received a salary increase — from $60,000 to $135,000 — waylaid a budget decision and raised concerns about the administration’s lack of transparency during an Oak Harbor City Council meeting this week.

Most council members acknowledged that Mayor Ronnie Wright does work full-time and deserves to be compensated for it, though they questioned the ethics of the process.

Yet Wright defended himself in an email to the Whidbey News-Times, saying that salary commission meetings are open to the public and the agendas are posted in advance. Minutes and decisions are posted online and are available for review. If the council would like special notice of salary commission meetings in advance, city staff is willing to accommodate, he wrote.

“I have been working full-time since I took office, and I asked the salary commission to consider that information in establishing my salary moving forward,” Wright said. “It is not the role of the salary commission to set or constrain the hours I work. That is entirely within my purview.”

Another snag in the budget decision was the request for council to approve $12,500 to continue the economic development coordinator’s salary for the rest of the year, when the position was originally paid for by American Rescue Plan funding, and the council didn’t feel they were going to renew the position. The mayor’s salary, though, became a bigger point of discussion.

Councilmember Shane Hoffmire suggested he would vote no on the entirety of the budget based on this hiccup.

“Shave my head and ship me out to sea, I suppose,” he said. “I’m just a no on it.”

According to Hillary Evans, the city’s attorney, both the mayor and the council members have been designated as full-time employees despite working part-time and not knowing of this designation. Wright recently approached the salary commission about the hours he has worked, and they approved a general fund adjustment, more than doubling his salary.

Evans said the council, while responsible for the budget, has no say in this adjustment.

“If you were to reject this budget amendment tonight, I’m not really sure what would happen,” she said. “You would have to go about repealing your ordinance and dissolving the salary commission.”

According to Evans, any council member could also approach the salary commission for a similar adjustment.

“I’ve got great news for the community,” Hoffmire said. “Council is going to be at your beck and call 40 hours a week. Let’s go now.”

Maybe the community needs a full-time mayor and seven full-time council members, Hoffmire said, but it will “blow the hell” out of the budget.

“The optics are horrible, for the mayor to be the one that appoints each and every member of the salary commission and then writes a letter for a pay raise, it’s ugly,” he said.

The mayor appoints every commission, not just the salary commission, and his appointments are approved by the council, said Councilmember Eric Marshall.

The commission was recently appointed by the mayor, said Councilmember Jim Woessner, and while the council did approve it, they were not presented alternative options. There are only so many people willing to volunteer their time for such a commission.

While Wright does work full-time and it is not unfair for him to ask to be compensated for that, it seems like he discovered a “glitch,” said Councilmember Bryan Stucky.

If the next mayor does not work full-time, that person would still collect the same salary, and the council has no authority to dictate how long the mayor works, he said.

“Tomorrow our mayor could choose to work one hour a week,” he said. “He won’t. I firmly believe he won’t, but he could. We can’t put a minimum number or a maximum on him.”

The council granted power to the salary commission so that they were not in control of their own salaries, Woessner said.

“What I guess I didn’t realize is that any one of us could come along and say ‘I want to work full-time now. I’ve decided I’m going to work full-time,’” he said.

Woessner acknowledged that with Wright, the city will get what it pays for, but the process seems wrong. It seems like a change of government with no one making the decision but the mayor.

The form of government would remain the same, Evans said. This is just a salary adjustment.

“The council was left out of this,” Woessner said. “The mayor was able to go directly to his appointees and say ‘hey,’ right? And here we are, and then we’re being told no matter what we do tonight, this is just the way it is.”

The council’s only course of action would be to dissolve the salary commission and create an ordinance for the council to set the salary. According to the Revised Code of Washington, the people of Oak Harbor could petition against the salary change within 30 days after filing the salary schedule. Because Wright’s salary was passed by the salary commission on July 2 and the council was not aware of the decision until Aug. 13, the change went through without resistance.

When the council voted for higher pay for city council members, it didn’t come into effect until the next elected term, so the council wasn’t voting on their own salaries, said Mayor Pro Tem Tara Hizon.

Further, the mayor could collect this pay, not do the work, and there is no recourse, she said. No one can do anything but vote him out.

“The mayor previous to Bob (Severns) literally didn’t show up for the last four months of his term and still got his entire pay,” Hizon said. “He just didn’t show up in August. We just didn’t see him.”

Tifany Scribner, chair of the salary commission, advised that voters shouldn’t elect someone who isn’t going to put in the hours. In addition, she said she stepped up to the committee and wasn’t hand-selected by the mayor.

“I would like to just make it very clear that if I was appointed nefariously during a meeting that I was not at, I’d love to know how that happened, and I take issue with the fact that the integrity of any of the people on that commission was called into question,” she said.

Whether it was nefarious, it appears that way, Hoffmire said.

“To the public, this is going to come across as some grandiose backroom deal, I mean it looks like a heist,” he said. “I am continually frustrated that the council is left out of the loop on these matters.”

Oak Harbor has a full-time city administrator running operations on behalf of the mayor, Woessner said. Additionally, there is a full-time deputy city administrator.

According to Deputy City Administrator David Goldman, mayors with and without city administrators are paid around the same amount.

“I’m being told now, ‘Well, you’re responsible for the budget, but not this one. The decision’s been made, and you weren’t even told we were thinking about doing this and you weren’t involved in the conversation at all,’” Woessner said.

The conversation has been in the works internally since before June, Scribner said.

“Can (mayors) basically promote themselves?” Woessner asked. “The answer I’m hearing is, ‘Yes, and not only did we not need to discuss it with you or involve you whatsoever, we kind of intentionally didn’t.’”

In April, the council discussed whether the mayor’s position should be changed to full-time.

“We didn’t come to a conclusion,” Stucky said, “and then we find out it was just made that way.”

Stucky suggested drafting an ordinance where if the mayor is going to take full-time pay, they must work the hours.

Despite Severns working fewer hours than Wright, he worked harder to involve the council on decision-making, Hoffmire said.

“In Mayor Severn’s last year or two, he did have a lot of health problems, and he wasn’t here that often, but council was always communicated with,” he said. “Council was always in the loop, so if the mayor is here so much more, why are none of us being communicated with? It’s very troubling.”

While the council does not vote on the mayor’s salary, they do decide whether to continue funding for the economic development coordinator position. Stucky questioned the “deliverables” this position brought.

According to David Kuhl, development services director, in the coordinator’s two years he has corresponded with Oak Harbor’s businesses and found their most pressing concerns, which are homelessness and staffing.

The council seemed unanimous that this is not enough to justify funding.

“Anybody that’s associated with businesses or talks to business owners or even lives in town knows that’s an issue,” said Councilmember Eric Marshall.

Wright said he plans to address council concerns regarding his salary further at the Aug. 20 city council meeting, where the budget conversation will also continue.