At Monday’s Urbana City Council meeting, council members were updated on the Urbana Sister Cities project, passed an ordinance fixing the salaries of city officers who are elected for a definite term and heard from a Champaign resident regarding the controversy of the Urbana Landmark Hotel.

Council members briefly discussed the proposal to give raises to elected city officers. According to the ordinance, the elected officials will not receive a salary increase in 2013, will receive a one percent increase in May 2014 and will receive two percent increases in May of 2015 and 2016.

Carletta Donaldson, Urbana resident, said she was opposed to the raises. She said she did not have a problem with the raises for the city clerk or the mayor because those positions are full-time jobs. Donaldson emphasized that aldermen do not rely on the salary they receive through their positions to make a living.

“It does come out of your own pocket to do alderman duties. And normally that’s what happens when you’re in leadership,” she said. “There’s never enough of what you make, something always has to come out, something out of your own pocket from time to time.”

Charlie Smyth, Ward 1, who opposed the motion along with Heather Stevenson, Ward 6, said he disagreed with the method by which the council reached the chosen raises.

“I’m not going to beat a dead horse here,” he said. “I’m not opposed to the increases, I’m opposed to the method by which we got there, a process which I find rewards those at the top of the hill more so than the bottom”

The ordinance passed six to two.

Also discussed at Monday’s meeting was an update for the council on Urbana Sister Cities’ progress in Zomba, Malawi, Urbana’s sister city.

“The council has been really supportive,” said Scott Dossett, secretary of the Sister Cities committee for Urbana and Urbana resident. “I always like to come and tell them what’s going on and let them know that with their help we’ve had success.”

Tod Satterthwaite, Mayor Laurel Prussing’s predecessor and a current Champaign resident and also an Urbana tax payer, offered commentary during the meeting disagreeing with the council’s management of the Redevelopment Agreement with Xiao Jin Yuan, the developer of the Urbana Landmark Hotel. According to an email from Elizabeth Tyler, director of Development Services for the city of Urbana, Yuan is in compliance with the agreement and is “expected to remain in compliance.”

However, Satterthwaite said the agreement has been mismanaged because the Urbana City Council is creating an alternative interpretation of the terms. During the meeting he posed 15 questions to the council that he wants answered regarding the agreement with Yuan.

Satterthwaite said in an interview he wanted to be sure the council wasn’t “flushing $1.5 million down a rathole.”

He added, “What I’m asking for is transparency. Let’s find out. Be open with us. Tell us what’s going on.”

Sari can be reached at [email protected]