Mayor Opens Her Calendar in Debate Over Duties of the Office

Jill Didier is a busy woman. She's a working mother of two young children, and her job is mayor of Wauwatosa. She makes $22,500 a year.

The Common Council could decide tonight whether to raise the salary of the next mayor to take office, which has been stuck firmly at at that figure since 1984.

During debates in January 2010 when the subject of raising the mayor's pay in 2012 was first brought up, and over the last month in two sessions of the Employee Relations Committee, there was a gulf of disagreement between aldermen as to whether the mayor's office is full-time or part-time; just what the mayor's true duties are; and whether the office is that of a true chief executive officer or a position of ill-defined public service.

Even aldermen who felt strongly that the mayor's office as it is performed is deserving of much better pay agreed that this is a bad time to be raising the pay of any elected official – especially by 100 percent, as originally proposed.

Ultimately, the employee committee sent forward a 3-1 recommendation that the mayoral salary be increased by 33 percent to $30,000 a year.

So, just what does a mayor of Wauwatosa do for whatever salary he or she gets, anyway?

Mayor Jill Didier, while declining to go on record as to whether she did or did not want to see the next-term mayor's pay raised, willingly opened her calendar to Wauwatosa Patch to reveal her day-to-day duties – and she said that whatever anyone wants to call it or what they want to pay for it, it is more than a full-time job.

"What I tell people is, I think it is semantics – debating whether the duties that are defined for the mayor are full-time or part-time," Didier said. "If you ask the previous two mayors, they'd say you work it full-time plus.

"Because of the use of technology, there is never really a down time. When Maricolette Walsh was mayor, she didn't even have e-mail, and it was still a full-time job.

"Take Monday for example...."

On that recent Monday, Didier said, she had:

• Begun her day at 8:15 with a phone call on an important economic development issue
• Attended the regular meeting of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District Board of Directors, of which she is a member
• Gone straight from MMSD to the regular meeting of the Intergovernmental Cooperation Council, making and returning phone calls en route to and from – "You can't be mayor if you don't do that," she said.

"That was eight hours without a break," Didier said. "Then I did take a break, got my kids and had a little family time.

"I came back to City Hall at about 6 (p.m.) and presided over the Plan Commission meeting. That got over about 9:30, but I stayed about a half-hour later to talk to some people.

"That's a minimum of on 11-hour day, and when I got home, I checked my e-mail.

"And that's a typical Monday."

The following day, a "non-Council Tuesday" – the mayor presides over the Common Council at its twice-monthly night meetings – Didier began with a phone call about Tosa Pool issues, then spent a couple hours on phone calls, e-mail and proclamations, had an internal staff meeting, met with an intern, then went to a meeting of the Research Park board, again getting away around 3 p.m. to pick up her kids.

But that night, she had a meeting from 5 to 7:30 p.m. of the board of Visit Milwaukee, upon which she also sits as vice chair, making for a 9 1/2-hour work day.

That Wednesday was an 8:15 a.m. to 3 p.m. office day with an outside meeting, Thursday likewise with an evening meeting, Friday the same with a Zoo Interchange stakeholders' meeting.

"It's 8 or 8:15 to 3 consistently," Didier said, "and there are typically evening meetings. If it isn't a governmental board, it's often reading a proclamation to a civic group or dropping in on Crime Stoppers, for example."

"These are things that people want you to do, maybe expect you to do," Didier said. "Could a mayor avoid those? The mayor is seen as the spokesperson of the city, the face of the city."

And so it went, back in time for a month, with Didier rattling off a meeting with an African delegation to the Research Park, meeting with and calling state representatives over legislative issues affecting Wauwatosa, multiple communications with Milwaukee County officials including County Executive Chris Abele, multiple communications with aldermen in Milwaukee, conversations and meetings with University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee officials about Innovation Park and master planning, a meeting of the Wisconsin Center District, the Council on Workforce Development, the Police and Fire Commission, Irish Fest, breakfasts, luncheons and more.

And always the phone calls, e-mails and meetings with constituents, with developers, with department heads.

One of the recurring arguments against raising the mayor's pay is that the city already has a well-paid professional city administrator, Jim Archambo, to whom the Common Council has delegated much of the authority of the chief executive – hence, the mayor has only very limited duties that are defined for the office.

The mayor presides over Common Council meetings and has the tie-breaking vote and the power of veto. She takes the chair of the Plan Commission, oversees the Police and Fire departments, and makes certain appointments to boards and commissions.

Beyond that, the argument goes, anything a mayor does is up to her or him. Few of the non-city boards upon which the mayor of Wauwatosa customarily sits are obligatory; none of the civic duties the mayor takes on are essential to the office or the functioning of the city; a mayor can even choose not to respond to constituents – at her peril come election time, of course.

In fact, a number of aldermen have argued, since the city administrator is the "true CEO" of Wauwatosa (even though statutorily it is the mayor), perhaps rather than raise the pay of the mayor, we should expect the administrator to be the spokesman of the city.

To which Didier responds, "That just isn't realistic. I work very closely with the city administrator and I know his duties as well as mine, and I can tell you there is no way Jim Archambo can possibly do what I do on top of what he already does.

"The idea that the mayor of Wauwatosa could just be a figurehead and run council meetings ignores what is expected of the mayor of Wauwatosa regionally.

"This city is so involved in affairs of the county and its institutions, the Medical Center, the Research Park, the university and so forth, and there is the expectation that the mayor is the spokesperson, the representative of Wauwatosa.

"The place of Wauwatosa in the big picture demands that its mayor be a full-time mayor."

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The Common Council meets at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday to consider the mayoral pay issue among other items of the agenda. The mayor's pay cannot be raised during the term of office. If the mayoral salary is not raised before the April 2012 election, it cannot be considered for an increase again until the 2016 term.