Mayor Don Richardson is being paid a full-time salary and he wants to go part-time. His proposesd compensation plan would drastically cut his own annual pay and work hours, while nearly doubling the five City Council members' earnings - from $325 per month to $600.

Richardson doesn't mind giving up nearly $35,000. He sees it as a way for the city to keep enough taxpayer money to properly pay employees.

"I see this as a way of saying we do value our City Council, and we try to be competitive with other cities in the area," Richardson said.

He said Eagle Mountain had been losing staff, and a recent wage study revealed council members weren't being paid comparable rates to those in surrounding cities.

"The study focused on cities comparable to us," city spokeswoman Linda Peterson said. "This brings Eagle Mountain closer to their pay level. It's definitely an improvement."

But Councilman David Lifferth says no thanks; he doesn't do his job for money anyway. Lifferth said it's more important that the city have a full-time mayor to deal with ongoing growth issues.

"Eagle Mountain is by far the most complex city of its size in the state, and we need a mayor who oversees all the complex activities," said Lifferth. "People voted for a full-time mayor, and the city is not becoming easier to manage or growing more slowly.

"I hope in the next election we'll have a candidate willing to work full-time."

Lifferth said it was unsettling how much work went into establishing the full-time position through council action and a vote of the people, and how little action it might take to undo it.

"It costs me money to be a city councilman every week," Lifferth said. "I don't know why we're raising the pay for a councilman. That needs to be a campaign issue and justified to the voters why we're doing it . . . . But who's going to turn down extra money?"

Lifferth said while he had heard of city staffers leaving Eagle Mountain over pay issues, the idea that the city could retain them by boosting the council's pay was "a strange argument."

The City Council appointed Richardson late last year to replace former Mayor Brian Olsen, who resigned days before being slapped with seven felony charges for allegedly misusing public money.

Richardson said he came into the job expecting part-time work and is merely adjusting his pay and hours to reflect that. He works full-time as a commercial banker.

During his first month as mayor, Richardson inherited Olsen's full-time salary of $69,982 and said he worked 70- to 80-hour weeks. This year, Richardson says he has settled in and lightened his workload to about 24 hours a week, taking an hourly wage based on the new $34,991 salary.

sgehrke@sltrib.com