It has been 30 years since Colorado Springs voters first approved a pay offer for City Council members, but a group of outgoing and former council members have revived talks about asking voters for a higher compensation rate.

When City Council President Randy Helms spoke to a group of this year’s candidates for office on Jan. 2, he thanked them for running to do good things for the city. Helms also warned that they should run for office out of passion and not because they expect to make money.

The nine members of the City Council receive a $6,250 stipend per year. After tax, that provides around $100 per week for a council role that can often look like a full-time commitment.

“I personally spend more than that in gas,” Helms said at the candidate training.

The League of Women Voters of the Pikes Peak Region is holding a conversation Jan. 18 about increasing the council compensation. A group of current and former council members will talk about the city’s long history of voters balking at the pay for elected officials and why a new effort is needed.

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Chineta Davis, a member of the League of Women Voters admin team, ran for a Colorado Springs at-large council seat in 2023. Davis said she would not be able to run for council again because of the financial challenge.

Since the election, Davis said she talked to several current council members who wanted to increase the compensation. Voters passed the $6,250 pay rate in April 1995. Because it passed as a charter amendment, any change to the rate would also need to pass as a ballot measure.

Council member Michelle Talarico said she was fortunate to receive good pay from her catering company during the two years she’s been elected. Talarico said the council needed a wider diversity of backgrounds and opinions and thought the compensation would help achieve that.

“How can they do this unless they’re wealthy or retired or in a position like mine? I want to make an effort to bring that back to the ballot sooner than later,” Talarico said.

Davis said the pay was especially useful to attract younger candidates to enter the elections.

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“They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but it’s not working. That’s what we’re doing by having the city charter set this for so long,” Davis said.

By that definition, the effort to begin paying the City Council may have looked insane for decades. Between 1974 and 1993, voters rejected eight separate ballot measures to begin offering salaries for council members. The proposals ranged from $4,000 per year to $22,500 per year and included setting pay for the mayor, who at the time was part of the council.

During the 1993 election, The Gazette reported that Colorado Springs was the largest city in the United States where council members received no pay.

The majority of Colorado’s other major cities provide a larger stipend for its council members than Colorado Springs. Aurora gives its council $18,550 per month to run a similarly sized city. Council members in Lakewood, Thornton and Castle Rock receive $14,400-$18,000 per year.

Last year, the Colorado Springs City Council voted unanimously to raise the annual salary for the mayoral position from $114,159 to $129,740. The city charter requires the mayor’s salary to be adjusted every four years based on how much the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood consumer price index, which measures inflation, has risen.

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Davis was personally interested in shooting even higher. She floated the idea of paying the council somewhere north of $40,000 per year, roughly a full-time wage, to guarantee a wider pool of people were able to run for office.

“We need at least two or three people who understand what the regular person who doesn’t make $100,00 per year struggles with,” Davis said.

The city has run two ballot initiatives to increase the council pay since the rate was first enacted. A 2005 ballot measure to increase the stipend to $12,000 per year was voted down. In 2013, around 80% of voters rejected a measure that would have increased council pay to $48,000 per year.

Denver City Council members receive a full-time salary of more than $100,000 per year. In 2022, voters in Fort Collins passed a charter amendment that set the pay for the mayor and council members as a percentage of the city’s median income. Council members in Fort Collins receive 50% of the Area Median Income during their term — currently equating to $41,600 per year.

The League of Women Voters’ conversation about council pay will be held at 1 p.m. on Jan. 18 at the IBEW Local 113 building 2150 Naegele Road.

Breeanna Jent contributed to this report.