During my successful City Council At-Large campaign in 2017, I listened in on the ongoing debate about shifting the Mayor position from full-time to part-time. The shift made sense to me at the time, because Cedar Falls had shifted the year previously to a full-time City Administrator. None of the other 900+ cities and towns in Iowa have both a full-time Mayor and a full-time city manager or administrator. My understanding is that, aside from Cedar Falls, only Waterloo and Council Bluffs provide full-time benefits to their Mayor, and neither of those cities employ a full-time city manager. So if part-time can work in 943 other cities in Iowa, why not Cedar Falls? On the face of it, that logic is still sound to me. But, as Paul Harvey would say, there’s also “the rest of the story”.
Over the past three years, I’ve had friendly conversations with more than two dozen of my fellow mayors, and have found that most mayors are putting in full-time work, but are only receiving part-time compensation. In some cases, it’s only $6K - $10K a year, with no health insurance. And this is true for Iowa’s larger cities, as well as smaller ones. Most are a bit envious of my salary (now $105K annually), and the medical and retirement benefits graciously provided by the Cedar Falls City Council for this full-time role as codified in City Code Section 2-186. Service as mayor typically takes 60 to 70 hours a week - just ask my family - and that's even with saying "no" to some invitations; I'm doing my best to preserve some time at home to be a decent husband and father (hopefully!).
All that to say, I’ve changed my position based on new information (the fact that most “part-time” mayors really are working full-time), so will not be bringing this matter up in the future, unless the public wishes to drastically reduce the expectations for this role (which I don’t recommend, because it’s all valuable advocacy, planning, and fund-gathering work for the city and people). I'm grateful for the opportunity to serve, and doubly grateful that the compensation appropriately matches the responsibilities and effort.
Thanks for reading to the end, and for doing the hard work to be an informed and engaged resident!