Small salaries, diversity and a possible decline in Madison’s City Council membership were some of the issues aired out during Monday’s special City Council meeting.

City Council provided input Monday for potential plans to change the salaries of alders and the size and number of districts within the city in an effort to better represent the results of the 2010 census and ensure a stronger focus on district and citywide problems.

The council’s recommendations will be passed along to a special committee composed half of alders and half of community members who will consider the council’s main concerns while making decisions on the debated issues within the coming months.

Every 10 years, the council goes through the process of making changes in the size of the governing body, the wages its members make and the diversity of council membership paired with the possible need to redistrict as a result of census findings.

Jeff Russell, a private consultant who moderated the meeting, asked each of the city alders to come up with sets of principles that would need to be taken into account while debating redistricting.

The guiding principles included a focus on “communities of interest,” increasing public participation in the process, minimizing aldermanic boundary confusion and condensing committee meetings to promote more efficiency and less banter.

Ald. Satya Rhodes-Conway, District 12, said communities of interest are yet to be defined but they might include areas populated by students or minority populations. She said the communities of interest must be taken into account for redistricting and added the City Council must also promote diversity in its own membership.

“We don’t do that good of a job electing people to the council who are women or of color,” Rhodes-Conway said.

Since the City Council is dependent on its part-time alders, members also raised issues about the roles and responsibilities of an alder.

Rhodes-Conway said the number of constituents an alder represents is important because each alder has certain stressors related to addressing citizens’ concerns. She said the council needed to reevaluate how it can best serve the city by addressing how many constituents is a reasonable number for one alder to represent.

Ald. Bridget Maniaci, District 2, said an alder should not have to suffer financially from their position on the council, which she said was an important issue for most members who have full and part-time jobs aside from representing their constituents.

“How do you maintain a part-time job and part-time council job and make it work financially”? Maniaci said. “A single person needs $1,500 to $2,000 a month for rent or bills at a base minimum – we’re paid poorly.” She also said the council should scale down the number of alders from 20, a relatively high number in comparison with national standards. During an informal polling, only Maniaci and Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, opposed maintaining the current number.

“I would really like us to pay some attention to what the County Board is doing in terms of the time line [for redistricting],” Verveer said. “It could make a difference on the number of districts plus one or minus one.”

According to state law, the process needs to be completed by the beginning of the summer.