Bend City Council.

It doesn’t matter if it is a good idea. Pays raises for elected officials get tricky.

An elected official voting for a pay raise for his or her position is trickier. And the trickiest is probably trying to explain to people why.

Bend city councilors will be venturing into this zone of trickiness on Wednesday. They are scheduled to discuss their ethical considerations when making decisions about voting on pay raises for city councilors.

There is like a wall between any council decision and current members of the council. They only vote on any pay or compensation increases for council members elected in future elections. Yes, current councilors may be reelected. But while they are in office, they don’t get to vote themselves a pay raise.

The recommendation for an increase that they may vote on may be what matters more. The recommendation from the city’s compensation committee was that each councilor “shall be paid a monthly stipend of $2,500.00 and the Mayor shall be paid a monthly stipend of $4,166.67” with an annual adjustment for inflation beginning on January 2026. The recommendation was also that councilors get the opportunity to opt into the city’s health and dental benefits and get a health and wellness stipend of $3,000.

Those increases would essentially double the compensation of the mayor and councilors. Would Bend get government twice as good? Probably not.

But being a councilor or mayor is a significant time sink. It can be like holding another job. Increasing compensation is one way of ensuring that more people would be willing to run for office.