by John Davis, KUAM News Wednesday, March 05, 2008 Subscribe to John's newsfeed   E-mail this article Printable version KUAM Toolbar Web Widgets Get RSS headlines

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The president of the Mayors Council of Guam would like to see raises for himself and his colleagues, implementing adjustments that would bump their salaries equivalent to that of island senators. For at least a decade now, mayors have been making just over $46,000 a year, with vice-mayors have been making just over $42,000. And with the rising costs of gas, groceries, healthcare and government services, Council president Pedo Terlaje felt it was necessary to propose a salary adjustment for mayors and vice-mayors come Fiscal Year 2009.

But for Piti mayor Ben Gumataotao and Dededo mayor Melissa Savares, it wasn't mayors and their counterparts that needed the increase. "Looking at the needs, I think the staff should come first before us," said Gumataotao. "I slave my staff, I slave them and they been coming in Saturday, Sunday, midnight, whenever, anytime I call them, and they do it graciously." And Savares said, "I need more staffing, I would rather have an additional person, persons at least with my maintenance crew to operate my office. I want to be open longer hours for my people."

Yigo mayor Robert Lizama, who openly opposed GPA's rate increases says the MCOG president's intentions are good, but he feels the timing is not right. "Should the body so desire to work on this movement by a majority vote, I want to go on record that I do not support this intent," he clearly stated.

After overwhelming support against the proposal for salary adjustments from almost every mayor, Terlaje, who is also the mayor of Yona, says his intent was not to automatically give mayors and vice-mayors an automatic increase, but to propose it to the Guam Legislature. Terlaje says, since the gap increase it seems most Government of Guam agencies are following suit, as well. "Almost all the agencies that are submitting their budget are asking for raises. So it's up to the body," he explained.

"The way I look at it, our budget is going to be a photocopy of last years budget and in our budget I don't even see that we have capitol outlays," Terlaje added.

With the mayors hopeful the Legislative Branch of the local government will show them the money for capitol improvement projects and operational expenses, the body decided neither to approve the proposal for pay increases nor discount it, rather deciding to table the discussion for a later date.