Turrell mayor still wants pay raise

Turrell mayor still wants pay raise

Cooper: ‘ I can’t let it go’

news@theeveningtimes.com

Turrell Mayor Dorothy Cooper has put the subject of the mayor’s salary on the city council agenda 18 times since taking office.

And she will continue to put it on the agenda every month until the council restores the salary to where it was, at $2,000 a month, before she took office.

“I keep being told ‘no,’” Cooper said. “I feel like I can’t let it go and that I shouldn’t let it go.”

Cooper brought the issue up again on the August agenda but officials were not able to conduct business due to a lack of a quorum.

The salary was $2,000 a month but the city council voted to reduce it to $1,000 a month during a special council meeting on Nov. 25 in 2014 — the day before the run-off election, which Cooper won.

Cooper has maintained that the council broke state law by changing the salary just before the election and that former Mayor Allen Spears did not ask for the salary to be reduced.

“I was running against one of the councilmembers in that run-off election,” Cooper said. “He was the one who made the motion to change the salary back to $1,000.”

The mayor’s salary was upped by the council in 2011 to $2,000 when Spears took office because the job required extra work to clean up a mess left behind by former Mayor Franklin Lockhart, who resigned in 2010 rather than face charged of malfeasance.

Lockhart was charged with eight counts of malfeasance in office for allegedly moving the city’s money across state lines, giving himself a bonus, and funneling money to pay wages for an unauthorized police department employee.

The salary increase was only supposed to be temporary for three months, however. The city council never revisited the issue while Lockhart was in office, but decided to reduce it back to where it had originally been set.

Cooper said she has researched the minutes from 2011 and found that not only did the council vote to increase the mayor’s salary, it also voted to raise the council’s salary from $100 a month to $200 a month.

“They did meet and had a discussion,” Cooper said.

“They voted to change his salary and theirs. They gave themselves a 100 percent

raise.”

That rate was reduced though back to $100 at that same 2014 meeting when the council cut the mayor’s salary back to $1,000 a month.

Cooper said if you add up the money from those raises, the city paid out $150,000 to the mayor and council during those four years.

Now they claim there is no money to raise the mayor’s salary or pay for a new car.

Cooper wants to know where the money is since the salaries were cut.

“They keep saying there is no money,” Cooper said.

“There has to be. If you do the math and see what was being spent, the money has to be there. That’s an extra $12,000 that wasn’t being used. So my job is to find out why the city doesn’t have the money.”

Cooper has also asked the city council to buy a new car for her to use.

She has been driving a city owned 1998 Ford F-150 which is in poor shape and not very roadworthy.

“I have to put it in neutral to start it,” Cooper said.

“I’m asking for safer equipment, something updated.

But I’ve been told no. I’ve asked for that for maybe 15 months.”

Cooper said for the last three months she has had a local car salesman who works for Landers Ford bring three different vehicles to the council meetings so the members can look at it and consider possibly buying one.

“They wouldn’t even go outside and look at it,” Cooper said. “They said no. I asked him to come back in June. He drove another vehicle over. Two councilmembers went out and looked at it but said the same thing in June. We don’t have the money.”

Councilman Floyd Holmes said Cooper’s request for more money and a car is all about her and not the well being of Turrell.

“It’s personal with her,” Holmes said. “If you listen to her it’s ‘I need more money. I need a car.’ It’s all about her. We have told her over and over not to bring this up. But she brings it up every month at the meetings. She just refuses to stop. And this car, the same thing. Even if we wanted to raise her salary $1,000 a month, the city does not have the money. It’s not going to happen.”

Holmes said as it is, Cooper uses the city vehicle as her own personal car at all hours of the day regardless of whether it is city business or not.

“It’s just a personal thing,” Holmes said. “She wants that $1,000 a month raise and she wants a new car to drive around for her personal car.”

Holmes said Cooper has yet to she the city council where the money is going to come from.

“She has never shown us where she can get the salary from,” Holmes said.

“At the last meeting she told us the money could magically appear and it could happen. But it’s not going to happen.”

Cooper claims that it is a matter of fairness. If the last mayor was paid $2,000 a month, she should receive the same.

She also maintains that she has earned it.

Since taking over as mayor, Cooper has gotten the city its own library branch and over $500,000 in grants including money to install a new water tank, $55,000 for a city park, and $250,000 to resurface city streets.

“You can talk to any citizen here and they will tell you there is a tremendous difference here from what it was,” Cooper said. “I’m working hard and doing so many things. We’ve got things working well. I’m grateful for being in this position. But at the same time, I’ve got to get my life together. I’m trying to do things decent and in order.

It is tough making it on $1,000 a month. There are wonderful people here and I just want great things for this city and the future.

That’s all I think about is what can I do to make it better.”

By Mark Randall