As Dumfries faces a budget crisis, council members forego all or part of their salaries

While the total pay cut of $13,643.37 taken by the Dumfries Town Council was announced Tuesday night, individual member contributions were not.

And those contributions were all over the place -- from a mere 10 percent by one council member to 100 percent taken by two.

Before the meeting began, each member of the council was provided with the specific salary information in a memo. Yet that memo was not made available to those who attended the meeting nor was it publicly discussed for those town residents watching the meeting on television. The News and Messenger was provided with a copy by Mayor Fred Yohey.

The town has been struggling with a budget crisis that has forced the council to raise the tax rate, furlough its employees and make deep cuts.

Yohey suggested that each council member should do their part by reducing their pay as each saw fit.

The council salary cuts were raised during the council's work session when Town Manager Kimberly Alexander was summarizing the budget situation.

"Do you want to share that information with the public in terms of how much?" Yohey asked.

"I will leave that up to council as to how and whether you wish to share that," Alexander said.

"Does anybody mind if we go public with what we are required to do anyway?" Yohey asked.

"As far as going down the line and saying, "This council member gave this amount and this council member gave this amount.' I don't feel that is my place," Alexander said.

"It's my place then. It's public information and I'm going to give the total," Yohey said, announcing the amount as $13,643.37.

"This is consistent with what we said we were going to do," he said. "Every council member was asked to contact the treasurer and indicated how much salary they would forego through the end of the fiscal year."

According to the salary memo, members Cliff Brewer and Nancy West gave up all their salary for the remainder of the fiscal year. That was $3,846.89 each.

Yohey gave up 45 percent, $2,583.60.

Dorothea Barr and Willie Toney gave up 25 percent, $961.70 each.

Vice Mayor Clyde Washington gave up 22 percent, $1,057.89.

Sue Cornell gave up 10 percent, $384.70.

The mayor and vice mayor are paid more than council members.

The mayor receives $8,040.36 per year. The vice mayor is paid $6,676.32 annually and each council member is paid 5,369.28 per year.

The council members, mayor and vice mayor have already been paid for four months of the current fiscal year. The percentages of the pay they relinquished is for the remaining eight months.

Yohey said Wednesday that he thought that the town manager should have released the specific information.

He said he didn't do so "because I sensed they didn't want it released, even though it's public information. I figured, OK, I would just go with the total." He added that he had already provided the information to the newspaper.

"It caught me completely off guard that the information wasn't readily available to the press, to the public, to anyone who wanted to know," Yohey said. "I thought I might have not understood something."

Staff writer Aileen Streng can be reached at 703-878-8010.