By The Fort Collins Community Action Network (FCCAN)
The Fort Collins Community Action Network (FCCAN) is dedicated to working for a
more socially just community. We believe that the Fort Collins City Council must be reliable,
responsible, and representative of our community, therefore we support the Proposal for
Full-Time City Council Members. Full-time work deserves full-time pay. Fair compensation makes serving on
Council more feasible for ordinary working people, and generally for many more underrepresented people.
Further, people should get paid fairly for their work, and anyone who works a full-time job deserves a living wage.
Our current City Council pay structure only allows people who already possess relative structural privilege and accumulated wealth to participate on the Council. This has resulted in the
exclusion of many potential, qualified candidates and has produced councils that are consistently predominantly white and male. A raise in compensation to the median wage will open the door
for a more representative body of candidates and help ensure accountability and transparency in our local democratic government
.
The Council has important responsibilities to manage: a yearly budget of approximately
$500 million, a population of approximately 160,000, and 2,000 city employees. Currently, the compensation for members of
City Council equates to less than ten hours per week. However, in
order to meet the job requirements, Council members require a forty hour work week.
FCCAN supports the proposal to raise the compensation rates to full time for members of
Fort Collins City Council and we simultaneously assert that this proposal is just one small link
in a long chain that must be transformed in order to work for our mission of creating a more
equitable community that is based on race, gender, environmental and economic justice. By no
means is this proposal a panacea or an all-encompassing solution to the myriad of institutional
barriers we face as a community.
FCCAN’s mission is to create a community based on furthering economic, social, and environmental justice,
sustainability, human rights, and peace for all by building coalitions,
developing strategies and actions, and supporting existing progressive organizations. As a
community organization, we remain committed to advocating alongside all workers in Fort
Collins. And as participants in the economy, we seek to understand our connection, our complicity and our power to challenge and transform these realities.