The Oak Harbor Salary Commission may soon have new rules for giving public notice on its meetings.

This change came at the request of Councilmember Bryan Stucky after the new, irregularly-assembling Salary Commission voted to more than double the mayor’s salary in July. Some council members said they felt blindsided when it was included in an August budget adjustment. At that time, the 30-day petition period had passed.

At a recent city workshop, City Administrator Sabrina Combs said that elected officials can establish their own salaries, which would not go into effect until the following term, or they can establish a salary commission. The Salary Commission meets once per year or as needed.

The commission was re-instated in January after Mayor Ronnie Wright took office. Wright appoints the commissioners, and the council approves his appointments.

“Let’s be honest, this last process was pretty controversial,” Stucky said. “I am not implying the mayor fixed it or anything like that, but I can understand why people would have that observation, ‘Hey, I’m appointing people who approve my salary.’”

Stucky suggested the council should approve the mayor’s salary to prevent an elected official from directly or indirectly setting his or her own salary.

Councilmember Jim Woessner said the problem is not in the structure of the system but in its lack of standards.

Woessner recited a 2005 quote from Phil Bleyhl, Oak Harbor’s attorney at the time the first Salary Commission formed: “You will want to invite public comment and input, which means you will want to hold one or more public meetings on the issue involved.”

“That’s the part we skipped,” Woessner said. “By the time we found out about it and the public found out about it, it was done.”

Woessner suggested putting this standard formally in the rules and procedures of the commission. The public should have been notified the mayor’s salary was being discussed and what the intended action was and given an invitation period for public comment, he said.

“If 30 days prior to that action, we had all been notified that action was pending, the newspaper had been notified that action was pending, the public had been notified that action was pending, and then nobody decided to comment on it and the action took place, it’s a whole different thing than after the fact, ‘oh by the way, we did this, and there’s nothing we can do about it,’” he said.

The council puts off decisions all the time because they don’t have enough public input, he said, for issues much smaller than the one made by the Salary Commission.

Mayor Pro Tem Tara Hizon, on the other hand, said the council is not supposed to be involved in the activity of the Salary Commission.

“I don’t think the council should decide the mayor’s salary,” she said. “I think that could get political real fast.”

Woessner is not suggesting the council is involved in the decision, he said, but the commission should not be blind to the public.

“By us being blind, the public is also blind,” he said.

Hizon said the council should not set rules for the Salary Commission that do not apply to other commissions.

The Salary Commission is much different than the others, Woessner said. Salary Commission meetings are inconsistent and irregular. The public is at a disadvantage compared to other meetings.

The Salary Commission is also the only commission where the decision is final, Woessner said. Every other commission makes recommendations to the council.

Further, the mayor’s salary discussion was posted with the other agendas, but it was not listed as an action item. Yet, action was taken.

“Right now, they can literally go into a meeting with very little notice to the public and they can take action right then and there, and it’s irreversible action, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” Woessner said.

Stucky supported more council input. He said that the commission members could get thousands of public comments and still do whatever they want.

Hizon said it is the council’s job to scrutinize the mayor’s appointees if members are concerned.

Staff will return with some adjustments to the commission’s bylaws in November, Combs said.

As part of these adjustments, the council will have more input on the application process for all commissions. Currently, people apply for the position online, staff reviews applicants for eligibility, contacts them, then brings the decision to the mayor, then the council.

In the future, council members will receive applications at the same time as city staff. The advisory board will interview the applicant, and there is more input in the recommendation for the mayor and later the council.

In addition, commissioner applicants will be asked more questions prior to their approval, and more contingencies will be in place to keep the council in the loop after resignations or committee changes.

“It’s typically been we have an opening, we have three openings, one person applied, you’re on,” Stucky said. “There’s no interview. There’s no conversation.”