Montgomery City Council officials approved an increase of salary and expenses allowed for the mayor and board of aldermen during a city council meeting on Feb. 17.

The new pay scales will be $250 a month for the mayor and $100 a month for aldermen. That equates to $3,000 and $1,200 a year for the mayor and aldermen, respectively.

City Administrator Steve Deves said the salary change won’t go into effect until each position is elected at a future municipal election. Two alderman seats and the mayor will be elected this April and two other alderman seats will be elected in 2027.

Mayor Mike Spirz and Ward I Alderman Tom Benney are running for re-election in April. Both seats are uncontested. Shannon Brock and David Turner are the candidates for Ward II Alderman.

Montgomery City Council members will have their first salary increase since 2009. That year, Jeff Porter was the mayor and Benney, Spirz, John Schneider and Tom Nichols (the current Ward II alderman) served as aldermen.

“This has been discussed in the past and never went anywhere as we’ve had the same council members for a great number of years and they didn’t want to increase their own pay,” Deves said. “We discussed it last year and decided to wait until after the new year to discuss it again as we will have a new board member this April for the first time in a long while.”

In the past, the mayor has been paid $200 a month and the aldermen have received $80 a month. Those wages were approved during a city council meeting in June 2009.

Deves said with the increase in pay, future members will continue to be asked to do more in these public positions.

“The social media climate has changed the roles of most board members,” Deves said. “It’s a little more strenuous and stressful than it used to be. So we’re going to try to do something accordingly because it’s harder to find people to run for office.”

In addition to salaries, the mayor and aldermen also receive expense allowances.

“The expense allowances are to cover items like transportation, cell phones, internet, office supplies, gasoline and other incidental items they use to communicate with the public or get to meetings and events,” Deves said. “They have many meetings, public events and other political or social events that they are asked to attend in addition to the city council meetings. They have more interactions with the public due to the massive increase in social media and cell phone communications in the last decade.”