If you accept an appointment to a public board in Park City like the planning commission or historic preservation board, don’t expect a big paycheck.
The boards are considered volunteer bodies. Planning commissioners receive about $100 a meeting for their work, and the historic preservation board gets $60. Other boards, like the library and recreation boards, don’t receive any compensation at all for their time.
The planning commission in particular has been pointed to as an example of compensation not always lining up with the amount of work, with meetings routinely stretching four hours or longer. Commissioners must also come prepared, sometimes reading hundreds of pages of dense reports and other documents beforehand.
Last week, the Park City Council explored ways to potentially offer more for people’s time.
The catch is Utah law puts a cap on how much public bodies can be compensated, and Park City is already up against that maximum.
To get around this, the council told staff to look into options like offering things like recreation passes or childcare credits.
Councilor Max Doilney summed up the council’s position last week and asked city staff to find ways to make the board seats worth people’s time while respecting state law.
“All the low-hanging fruit that we can provide, that’s kind of where I’m landing," Doilney said. "I know we started this conversation a different way, I understand we’re constrained, but let’s find the places where we’re not constrained and let’s take advantage of those.”
Councilors also discussed future benefits as a way to potentially attract a more diverse field of applicants.
Councilor Steve Joyce shared a different perspective. Joyce was a member of the planning commission during the lengthy Treasure Mountain development talks in the mid 2010s and is retiring from the council in January. He said the city needs to reevaluate the jobs of councilor and planning commissioner if they really want more diversity in city organizations.
“I don’t think throwing an extra $100 and a MARC pass is gonna buy you diversity or anything like that," he said. "If you’re already working two jobs it’s like, ‘Yay a MARC pass and golf discounts, wooo!’ If you ever want to really get diverse, you gotta change the job description. I honestly believe there’s absolutely no other way to do it. You can’t have people working this hard and long or that hard and long. Art board, rec board, those kinds of things seem to survive and function well, because they’re not that demanding time-wise, but [council and planning commission] are fundamentally broken. If you want anything other than a very tiny part of the population being able to even consider it.”
Councilor Becca Gerber, who works full-time outside of her council duties, told KPCW she is able to balance the two because her job allows flexible hours. She also acknowledged that many other people who work full time might not be as lucky.
“It is really important that every once in a while we reflect back on all of the requirements that we are putting on our elected officials," said Gerber. "I know our liaison roles can get quite hefty. It’s hard, because I think that everyone wants to feel like they’re pulling their share, pulling their load, and depending on what you have going on in your life, you might not have time for 10 extra meetings a week. And unless you want people who are all retired, then it might be worth it for us to trim some of those back.”
Gerber added the topic of public board compensation will be back in front of the council in the near future, but a specific date has not been decided on yet.
