OPINION —
In 2021, the city of Auburn’s average wage was $64,713, with 560 employees. For comparison, the city of Huntsville’s average wage was $50,048, with 2,567 employees, and the city of Montgomery’s average wage was $44,403, with 2,247 employees. Does the city of Auburn have the right each year to be irresponsible with our tax dollars by paying $7.8 million more than Huntsville, or $11.2 million more than Montgomery, to its employees? The Auburn City Council gave City Manager Megan Crouch a $35,000 raise by a vote of seven-to-one this past May. The city manager will be making $1 million over the next four years with an estimated $200,000 in benefits. In 2021, the three highest-paid city employees in the state of Alabama were Auburn city employees: Crouch, who had a salary of $215,000; Troy Dunlap, who had a salary of $208,080; and Clarence Stewart, who had a salary of $187,966. The fourth was an employee in Huntsville. I know Auburn wants to be No. 1, but it should not be on the back of Auburn citizens by overspending on city salaries. You can find all this data on opengovpay.com/employer/al/city-of-auburn/2021?page=1. What could Auburn have done with all the excess overpayment of city employees? Maybe provide plenty of youth sports facilities for all our children. Maybe the Auburn citizens have an idea of what could help in each ward with the use of this excess money. I think it is time that the Auburn City Council stops letting bureaucrats control the development and wasteful spending of our taxpayer’s dollars. The Auburn City Council in March of 2021 decided to discriminate against 151 Auburn families in certain areas of the city by passing ordinance 3288: Short Term Rental. All this has accomplished was taking away Auburn citizens’ financial ability to pay bills, taking away their property rights and taking away their constitutional rights. It also took away a much-needed service that no hotels or real estate developers could ever provide: a place where Auburn alumni, parents and visitors can have a family atmosphere during graduation, football games, and parent’s visitation of Auburn University. There will never be enough hotels built in the Auburn area to provide all the needed rooms during these events. What do you think as an Auburn citizen? Do you feel you have lost your rights to the Auburn bureaucrats? Is this the reason many of you did not vote in the last city election? Call your council person in your ward by going online to www.auburnalabama.org/city-council/council-members/. Let’s demand that our Auburn City Council serve the people instead of listening to developers and city bureaucrats.
Robert Wilkins
Auburn Citizen
