Why “She’s Not My Martyr”? About 15 years ago, some citizens in Milton, in response to various events occurring at the time, had signs in their yards that read “She’s Not My Mayor.”

In the summer of 2020, during city council meetings discussing the mayor position and her salary, Chief Hernandez used the word “martyr” several times regarding the mayor, such as “how long does a person have to be a martyr?” and “she’s doing it as a martyr“. He was also quoted using the word “martyr” in the News Tribune article on the salary issue. So after hearing that term used several times, I said to my husband during a meeting, “she may be his martyr, but she’s not my martyr“.

Over the seven meetings (May to August, 2020), I heard Mayor Styron-Sherrell and Chief Hernandez make statements that screamed for fact checking. This website is the result of that fact checking (via public records requests against transcripts of city council meetings) and as a platform to alert other interested citizens to what had occurred.

• The Milton City Council raised the Mayor’s salary 400% last August (2020) from $18,000 to $72,000 year.
• The mayor/staff original plan was to raise her salary from $18,000 to $93,700 with full benefits and make it retro back to January, 2020. It would also sunset at the end of her term and the salary would return to $18,000. The city attorney told them that only employees in a collective bargaining agreement can receive retroactive pay. (Public Records installment A, pages 123-125), and it was only with citizen pushback at meeting after meeting that council finally dropped the sunset clause.
• The salary discussion occurred during a time when they didn’t allow citizens to comment when the agenda items were being discussed. Citizens could only submit comments in advance of the meeting. I asked the city clerk how citizens could see the submitted comments, and she told me that the mayor said I had to submit a public records request. I questioned that policy because pre-Covid citizens could hear the comments read at the meeting without having to submit a request (at this point citizens weren’t being allowed to speak at the meetings — we could only submit written comments that weren’t read allowed). I said it would seem at a minimum citizen comments should be attached to the minutes, especially if we aren’t allowed to read them into the audio minutes. The Mayor said she was following the advice of the city attorney, and I told her that other cities were letting their citizens speak and attaching comments to the minutes. She said she would look into it and later sent me this email (link). Later in July or early August she began allowing citizens to speak, but only during the citizen comment period, and then you had to sign up in advance.
• In August, on the morning of the budget retreat where her salary would be discussed, the mayor emailed city council lobbying for a raise and sent that email to her executive staff. She did not disclose the email publicly. (Read blog post #2 to view/read the documents).
• The Mayor stated she was not involved in increasing her own salary. Emails show the opposite to be true (Read blog post #1 to view/read the documents)
• The Mayor stated she didn’t know about salary commissions. Emails show the opposite to be true (Read blog post #3 to view/read the documents)