A push to repeal raises targets Warren council members

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Near the end of 2023, Warren City Council passed a law that would nearly double their own salaries.

Since then, Former Councilman at Large Ken MacPherson has been working on a referendum petition to rollback those raises.

"Currently council's salary is almost as much as the lowest paid full time employee for really a part time job," MacPherson said.

The salary increased 84 percent from $11,109 per year to about $20,000. MacPherson called the raise excessive and is fighting for the people to be able to decide political pay raises.

"There's problems with this law the way it's written that 2023 law, that need to be fixed. This fixes that and it fixes the inappropriateness of the increase, the excessiveness of the increase. Still gives a decent increase, still significantly more than Mansfield makes and still an increase I think that's appropriate," he said.

Warren Councilman Greg Greathouse tells 21 News that in addition to the cost of living going up, they needed to find a way to keep people working in the city.

"The law director came to me and he said I can't hire attorneys to be prosecutors in front of the court because they can make more money with the public defender's office," Greathouse said.

As a result, several departments received raises including the prosecutor's office. Greathouse said it's not a "forever raise."

"It was a one time 84 percent increase. The thing to keep in mind was there hadn't been a salary adjustment in 16 years. During that same period of time we'd had a pay decrease because the cost of living was 48 percent higher than it was," Greathouse said.

Greathouse adds that their pay should be up to par with surrounding cities.

"If this gets rolled back, we'll get paid $2.83 cents per constituent. Go up the road to Bristol and the township, they get paid $16 per constituent. Now where is the equity in that." Greathouse said. "Youngstown makes $8,000 more a year than we do," he said.

Greathouse tells 21 News if the repeal goes through, they'll lose important city employees.

"If this repeal goes through, there goes the prosecutor's function within the city government. There will be nobody to represent the city when it comes time," Greathouse said. " I mean, the police could arrest people, there'd be nobody to file charges. They won't work for that kind of money," he said.

"That's absolutely false. We can set prosecutor's salaries as elected officials to whatever we want," MacPherson said in response.

On Tuesday from 6-8pm inside of the banquet room of Sunrise Inn in Warren, there will be a town hall discussing the matter.

The referendum petition needs 950 valid signatures by the end of July to make it onto the November ballot.