Parks mayor and council may receive salary bumps

Parks — The village administration has three weeks to see if the public will respond against local pay raises as fervently as they did legislative pay raises.

Only moments after adopting a $1.25-per-hour raise for clerk Charlene Hill, the council here proposed a bump in pay for the aldermen and mayor at its June 11 meeting.

Alderman Kevin Kately suggested a $50-per-month increase for the three council members and a $2,600 yearly salary increase for Mayor John Dugas. If adopted, the measure would increase the council’s salary to $3,000 per year and the mayor would receive $42,200 annually.

Kately said he proposed the pay increase because the cost of living is rising. He mentioned rising fuel prices as the main factor in needing to raise salary standards.

“We want to serve everybody, but we have to accommodate those who take care of people outside of the city limits,” Kately said.

Kately had proposed a pay increase across the board at the council’s April meeting, but the issue was tabled to focus exclusively on the salaries of Hill and police chief Ronald Solarie.

In other business:

•Dugas and village engineer Calvin Courville, of Domingue, Szabo and Assoc. of Lafayette, are devising a new process of dealing with proposed water system customers. Dugas has repeatedly stressed concerns about having new subdivisions tapping into the Parks water main.

Dugas said when there was just one or two subdivisions in the area, things were manageable. But now he is concerned that customers at the end of the line may lose water pressure if the system is overworked.

Dugas and Courville said they will meet with developers to assess the system’s capacity before they can break ground on new subdivisions.

One alternative to the problem may include adding boosters to the water main further down the line to maintain current pressure levels. The worst case scenario would be for developers to supply new subdivisions with their own water from a well that would be placed on site.

“It’s not a good alternative, but the system can only handle so much,” Dugas said.

•Once again, the council agreed to waive the tax millage by Dugas’ suggestion. He said the process of collecting the tax costs the village more than is actually owed by the residents.

Accountant Chip Maraist cautioned the council of the consequences of waiving the tax millage repeatedly. Maraist said because 2008 was a reassessment year for the village, the council may permanently lose its authority to impose the tax after five years.