Members of the Barrington Town Council recently voted unanimously to give themselves raises. 

Four Council members currently receive $1,000 annual stipends, while the Council President receives $2,000. At their meeting on May 1, Council members voted 5-0 to raise that stipend amount by $1,000 each. If approved at the upcoming financial town meeting, the total Town Council salary line item will be $11,000. 

The vote followed a recommendation by the town’s Committee on Appropriations to eliminate the $1,000 per Council member raise from the proposed 2024 municipal operating budget. 

Barrington COA member Bill DeWitt explained the recommendation.

“In a year when we gave additional increases to police and fire of about 8%, I thought it was excessive to give the TC members increases of $1000 each,” DeWitt wrote in an email to the Barrington Times. “That amounts to a 100% increase for 4 councilors and a 50% increase for the TC president. Remember it was only a few years that they gave themselves a 100% raise. So in less than 10 years their stipend has increased from $500 to potentially $2000. 

“The probate judge is slated to get a 300% raise and the town manager’s car allowance is slated to increase 500% as I was unable to get a majority on the COA to reduce those increases. While these are not large dollar amounts, I thought in a recession year, we should hold off on increases of those percentages.”

The Council did not agree. 

At the May 1 meeting, Council member Braxton Cloutier spoke about the stipends. He said Barrington’s Council stipends rank 38 or 39 in the state and that the proposed $5,000 increase would push the town’s rank to 30. Cloutier said none of the Council members ran for office in an effort to get rich, but there are economic barriers to serving, such as transportation costs and childcare. 

Cloutier, a first-term Council member, said that proposing a total stipend increase of $5,000 was not a ridiculous reach. Cloutier also shared a list of other towns in Rhode Island that offer larger stipends to their Council members. 

Barrington Town Council President Carl Kustell said members of the Council dedicate their time to numerous issues and attend five or six board and/or commission meetings each month in their roles as council liaisons. Kustell said he supported the stipend increases. 

Cloutier then made a motion to restore the addition of $5,000 in the Town Council salaries line item in the proposed budget. Rob Humm seconded the motion, and it passed 5-0. 

DPW increase

In addition to approving $1,000 stipend increases, members of the Council also approved $75,004 for an additional public works department employee and $60,000 for a new resiliency consultant. 

Kustell led the effort to fund the additional DPW position. The Council President said the department was not fully staffed — he cited a study commissioned a few years ago by former Town Manager Jim Cunha that stated the DPW was under-staffed by six positions. The town has filled four new DPW positions, Kustell said, but another worker was needed, he added. Kustell also spoke about some of the work the department has been able to accomplish with more staffing. 

Council members did not discuss the item for very long, and no one asked for input from DPW Director Alan Corvi, who was in attendance at the meeting. 

Kustell made a motion to restore the funding, and Council approved the motion 5-0. 

Earlier in the meeting, the Town Council voted unanimously to spend $60,000 to hire a resiliency consultant. In a memo to the Town Council, Barrington Town Manager Phil Hervey wrote that the consultant would work closely with Teresa Crean, the town’s director of planning, building and resiliency in multiple areas, such as “preparing and administering grant applications, staffing Resilience and Energy Committee meetings, and assisting with the development of a Climate Action Plan.”

Crean spoke in favor of hiring the consultant. She said there were a number of tasks that the consultant could help with — she mentioned that three residents were planning to work with federal programs to raise their homes due to flooding concerns; Crean said that process required a lot of time and effort from her department. 

The $60,000 will come from the town’s Climate Mitigation Capital Reserve Account, which had an unencumbered balance of $262,284. 

The proposed 2024 municipal budget also includes an additional $150,000 in the capital budget for climate mitigation.