Alpine is considering raises for its mayor and city council members.

Ultimately Mayor Hunt Willoughby told the members of the council to provide him separately with their thoughts on the subject and that he would compile them for discussion at a future meeting.

The mayor currently is paid $9,600 annually and has a monthly cell phone allowance. The City Council members are paid $4,800 annually.

"The current amount barely covers the cost if that [is] what our actual expenses are," Tracy Wallace said. "Obviously we're pretty low compared to a lot of the other cities."

The only city that is paid less than Alpine is Cedar Hills, whose mayor makes $9,000 while the council makes $3,600. Of the 14 other cities listed, 10 have benefits packages. According to figures used during the meeting, the average amount of these benefits is $12,000 annually for each member.

"Lehi is currently reviewing salaries," Councilman Jim Tracy said. He said that if you added the cost of the benefits of the different cities to their listed salary, that their total benefit would be much greater than those of Alpine's representatives.

With five city council members and a mayor in Alpine, adding medical and dental benefits would add approximately $72,000 to the city's bottom line.

"Alpine has always been more of a volunteer job," Kimberly Bryant said. When you decide to run, it should be from a desire to serve the city instead of for pay, she said.

"The motivation to run comes from a desire to serve," Willoughby said while trying to mediate the discussion. "It's a little awkward to talk about but it needs to be done."

"I think the possibility of a salary cost of living increase is fair and we should discuss it while we are doing the budget next year," Councilman Thomas Whitchurch said. We should also explore the possibility of having benefits instead of being paid, he said.

The average mayor's salary is $17,668 while the city council rate is $7,356. The salary for Eagle Mountain's mayor is $70,000 but it is a full time job as opposed to the part time hours that Alpine's mayor puts in.

"We should all run for mayor of Eagle Mountain," Willoughby joked. When the mayor asked for the members to send him their thoughts on the subject, Bryant and Whitchurch said that they were comfortable with the current salaries.

Any raises voted on would not go into effect until January 2010. This topic will be on a future City Council agenda which can be found at alpinecity.org before the meeting.