Seven resolutions that urge voter-approved charter amendments to overhaul how Honolulu pays its employees were under City Council review this week.

Specifically, the legislation follows the city Salary Commission’s March 19 recommendation to grant a 3% or greater pay boost for the mayor, managing director, the Council and other elected and appointed, high-level city officials.

The proposed pay hikes come less than a year after the Council received a controversial 64% salary increase and the Honolulu mayor’s pay jumped nearly 12.6%.

In 2023, eight members of the Council were awarded a $44,400 pay bump to $113,304, up from $68,904. Three rejected the pay raises.

If the latest recommendation is adopted, the pay would increase to $116,712.

The Council chair’s post — which in 2023 saw a 60% pay bump, to $123,292 annually, up from $76,968 — is now proposed to have its pay boosted to $126,712.

Compensation for all city workers will be included in the mayor’s proposed $3.63 billion operating budget, a 6.4% increase over the city’s current $3.41 billion spending plan.

Earlier this month and in response to questions from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, the full nine-member Council confirmed it will not accept the commission’s recommended 3% pay boost for fiscal year 2025, to be presented Tuesday, which, if approved, would take effect July 1.

Instead, the Council has floated related resolutions — each calling for questions to be placed on the 2024 general election ballot — to change or limit the Salary Commission’s powers to grant salaries.

Those resolutions include:

>> Resolution 82: To place a 5% cap on any Salary Commission- recommended pay boosts. That resolution would also see the Salary Commission convene biennially in every even-numbered year, and establish salaries and salary schedules for the following two fiscal years no later than the first day of May.

>> Resolution 85: To limit the Salary Commission’s ability to increase salaries by more than 10% a year.

>> Resolution 86: To require the Council to hold a public hearing on any resolution issued by the Salary Commission proposing to alter city officials’ salaries.

>> Resolution 87: To allow the Council to reject all or a portion of the salary recommendations of the city’s Salary Commission by a simple majority vote, or 50% plus one. Currently, the nine-­member Council must achieve a three-quarters vote — or seven members of that body — to jettison in whole or in part the city’s next salary schedule.

>> Resolution 91: To remove the Council from having a role in reviewing the salaries set by the Salary Commission, and to provide that the Salary Commission may not increase the salaries that it sets for elected officials by more than 3.5% per year.

>> Resolution 105: To remove Council members’ authority to vote on their own salaries and provide the Salary Commission with a formula for increases in line with the average increase for city employees set by collective bargaining; and change the Salary Commission’s meeting schedule to every two years.

>> Resolution 193: To provide that any salaries altered by a resolution adopted by the Salary Commission will take effect on the first day of the city’s fiscal year subsequent to the resolution’s adoption and cannot be rejected or altered by the Council; and to specify that a member of the Salary Commission can be reappointed only once to a second five-year term.

During the Council’s Wednesday meeting, Oahu resident Natalie Iwasa commented on each of the resolutions.

Among them, she opposed Resolution 193, advanced by Council member Val Okimoto in 2023, because it “would make any recommendations to the Salary Commission go into effect automatically” and not be rejected by the Council.

“Because currently, as you know, you and the mayor appoint all of the commissioners, and there is no prohibition to appointing people who have relationships with you or the mayor,” Iwasa told the Council.

She said “it’s not good for public policy when you have friends or people that you know on the commission who may feel favorable to giving you increases.”

“I do like the idea, however, of limiting the number of terms that commissioners can serve,” she added.

Council Chair Tommy Waters later asked Iwasa about potential changes to the way the city appoints people to the Salary Commission.

She replied that “using good-governance nonprofit organizations” like Common Cause Hawaii or the League of Women Voters of Hawaii could help.

“Those types of organizations (could) have a representative on the commission,” she said. “And that, I feel, removes the relationship that might occur when the Council members or the mayor make the appointments themselves.”

On Council member Augie Tulba’s Resolution 82, Iwasa said a proposed 5% cap on any Salary Commission- recommended pay hike could be increased to 8% or 10%.

“We never know what is going to happen,” she said. “We could have something like the pandemic come along again. … We want to make sure there’s some flexibility without being unreasonable without being at the 64% rate.”

Others, like Oahu resident Choon James, wanted to see higher civic-minded ideals for those entering local government. She then borrowed President John F. Kennedy’s famed phrase made during his 1961 inaugural address, but added a twist.

“Ask not what your city can do for you — ask what you can do for your city,” said James. “And so it used to be that there was a time when serving and occupying public offices came out of a citizen’s desire and heart to give back to society.”

She added, “Serving public officers should not be a lifelong, profitable career.”

Later, city Salary Commission Chair Malia Espinda shared how her panel — variously appointed by the mayor and Council — arrived at the recommended pay raises, particularly for Council members, in 2023.

She said the commission classified Council members on par with the city’s executive managers.

In Honolulu, she noted, administrators are classified as “excluded managers” — or EM-08 — which is also used in state-level jobs. According to the state Department of Human Resources Development, minimum pay for an EM-08 position is $122,532 a year, with a maximum compensation of $196,152 per year.

“We’re bound by ordinance that we need to compare your positions by other city employees,” Espinda said, adding that pay recommendations for the Council initially included three different tier levels. “It included the highest tier that would have had you at director level.”

But eventually, she said, “we landed on the EM-08.”

“You are the leaders of your legislative branch, so we did a comparison to the leaders of an administration division, the EM-08s,” she said. “Those are the leaders of their departments, and those can be large departments, they can be smaller departments, but those are the leaders of those departments.”

She noted that “EM-08s in the city can rise — over time they will continue to go up through collective bargaining.”

But not so for the Council.

“In this case, your EM-O8s are tethered to the starting level, period,” Espinda said, “unless as we come in, year over year, and make our increase recommendation. But as of last year it’s EM-08s’ starting (pay).”

Ultimately, the Council voted to pass the seven resolutions on first reading for future discussion.