Part-Time City Council Votes Itself 160% Raise : Finances: Huntington Park leaders get around 5% state limit on pay hikes by creating panel that replaces redevelopment agency. Members defend the action, saying they were underpaid.

Exploiting a loophole in state law, members of the Huntington Park City Council gave final approval Tuesday to a 160% increase in their salaries.

The action, which came an hour before the regular council meeting began, hikes the members’ pay from $11,520 per year to $30,000.

The vote was 3 to 1, with council members Tom Jackson, Linda Luz Guevara and Jessica Maes supporting it and Councilman Rick Loya in opposition. Mayor Rosario Marin abstained.

State law allows council members in general law cities, such as Huntington Park, to increase their salaries by no more than 5% per year. Any raise beyond that must be approved by voters.

To get around the law, the part-time council members last month appointed themselves to a newly created Community Development Commission with a new salary.

The council members currently receive nearly $900 a month, plus $60 per month to act as members of the city’s redevelopment agency. The Community Development Commission will replace the redevelopment agency.

Under the bylaws adopted Tuesday for the new commission, members will receive $1,600 per month for the part-time job in addition to the current council salary of $900 per month.

That total is about 26% higher than the median household income in Huntington Park, a mostly working-class Latino community of 56,00 people.

Loya and other critics of the raise point out that the council was forced to impose a 7% utility tax on residents last year to keep the city budget in the black.

The vote came at a special meeting of the new commission. A suggestion by the mayor that the action be postponed until the City Council meeting, to give residents a chance to comment, was voted down.

Loya, who vowed not to accept the pay raise, read a statement lambasting the council’s action and calling the commission “needless.”

“The commission was created to increase compensation for the City Council, which I believe was an abuse of the spirit of California redevelopment law and a further example of the council’s putting its interests ahead of the constituents of Huntington Park,” Loya said.

The “whole commission is not an issue about improving redevelopment or housing stock in Huntington Park,” he said, “but improving the compensation of the council.”

Councilwoman Guevara, who introduced the measure to create the commission, has said that the council members have been working long hours on city developments and deserve to be “compensated fairly.”

Jackson vehemently agreed Tuesday, saying that council members are underpaid for long hours, and that a clerk typist or a dog catcher in the city makes more money than they do.

“I say we are at least worth the salary of the lowest-paid employee in the city,” he said. He added, “Just because we are elected to this position doesn’t mean we have to donate all our time.”

The council and the commission each meet twice a month.

Last month, council members voted unanimously to increase their daily travel allowance, applicable when they are out of town on business, from $200 to $250, and raise the council’s expense account limits from $225 to $325 a month. The mayor’s expense account limit increased from $250 to $375.

Guevara said the new ceilings on those accounts were needed to keep up with the increased cost of living.

In approving the new commission, the council is following the lead of Bell Gardens, where council members boosted their pay last month from $12,200 to $31,375 by naming themselves to a newly created Community Development Commission.

Lynwood City Council members found another way to double their annual salary to about $41,500 last year: They voted to pay themselves $450 to attend each meeting of two city agencies and increased the number of times those agencies meet to at least twice a month.