Commissioners of this Broward city want a $30k pay raise. Residents are outraged

Big drama is brewing in a tiny Broward city.

Residents of West Park, a small municipality south of Hollywood, are sounding the alarm on what some call “self-serving” proposed spending by city commissioners ahead of a commission meeting this Wednesday. In one of Broward’s smallest cities, three out of five commissioners showed interest in raising their salaries to $40,000, effectively quadrupling their current $9,600 salaries. The final budget public hearing is at 6 p.m., followed by the regular city commission meeting at 7.

“What they do in Hollywood, this city can’t do. We only have 16,000 residents,” said Carolyn Hardy, 75, a longtime West Park resident. “When you got little money, you work with little money. Some people have a Rolls Royce appetite, but they should be driving a Volkswagon.”

At a press conference in West Park Thursday, about a dozen residents from the group West Park Strong voiced their concerns with not just the budget but an increasingly hostile environment at City Hall where commission meetings and budget workshops regularly devolve into longwinded arguments and squabbles.

This comes just weeks after Commissioner Katrina Touchstone sued the city, mayor, city clerk and city manager, accusing city officials of running the local government “like a dictatorship.”

But some residents lobbed a similar claim at Touchstone herself, alleging that she runs a three-person majority on the five-seat commission like a “mob boss.” Following Commissioner Cristina Eveillard’s election last November, a three-person coalition was formed between Eveillard, Touchstone and Vice Mayor Joy Smith that frequently opposes Mayor Felicia Brunson.

“It’s really a pride game and it’s hurting the community,” said resident Derrick Jones Jr.

A raise for commissioners, but not city staff

West Park, home to fewer than 16,000 people in a 2.2 square mile area, sits just north of Miami-Dade County and south of Hollywood. It was officially incorporated as a city in 2005. The city’s annual budget is about $36,000,000.

West Park commissioners, which are compensated volunteer positions, make about $10,000 a year, and receive medical, dental and life insurance coverage. Each of the four commissioners’ total salaries with benefits cost the city about $43,000. The mayor’s total salary with benefits is over $17,000, according to city documents. The city does not pay for the mayor’s health or dental insurance. (Commissioners raised their pay in 2022 from $300 a month to $800, Touchstone said at a June 18 meeting.)

At the June 18 city commission meeting, Eveillard brought up a motion to have the finance director plan to raise commissioner salaries to $40,000 annually, much to the chagrin of Mayor Felicia Brunson and Commissioner Brandon Smith. When the Miami Herald asked Eveillard if she still supported the raises, she said her views on the matter are reflected in that meeting. Touchstone, Joy Smith and Commissioner Brandon Smith did not respond to requests to comment for this story before publication.

“The commissioners are grossly underpaid, and more time is needed in the office to effectively get the work done to move the city in a better position or direction than what has happened in the last 20 years,” Eveillard said at the June 18 meeting.

“We haven’t even gotten into budget season yet, and you’re already spending money,” Brunson told Eveillard. “So I will caution you in putting forth a resolution or an idea like this when we have not even started to discuss our budget. You don’t even know what it looks like, what it’s going to be.”

Touchstone amended the motion to ask the city manager to conduct an analysis on how commissioners in other similarly-sized cities in South Florida are compensated. The motion was approved 3-2.

On Sept. 20, after publication of this article, Vice Mayor Joy Smith posted a statement on her public Facebook account that said the Herald’s reporting on the matter was “misleading.” In her statement, she said the Herald incorrectly reported that commissioners discussed or voted on raises during a Sept. 3 meeting, though the Herald’s original story did not mention that meeting.

“While discussions about municipal budgets are complex and often involve comparisons to neighboring municipalities, there has been no action, directive, or recommendation by this Commission to increase compensation,” Smith wrote.

The agenda for the Sept. 17 meeting includes an item to discuss the city manager’s survey that compares West Park’s compensation for its city commissioners to 11 other municipalities. According to the memorandum, West Park is one of only three municipalities that pay for commissioners’ insurance benefits and one of three municipalities that pay commissioners a pension. By comparison, the Village of Pinecrest, which has the largest population out of the 11 cities in the survey, does not pay its mayor or commissioners any salary.

While she supports giving commissioners a raise, Eveillard shot down the idea of giving other city staff a bump in pay.

Last Monday, at a city budget workshop, Eveillard said she was not in favor of a five percent pay increase for city staff because “the budget is tight, and we don’t have enough funds to help our residents.”

“I’m going to recommend for us to remove the five percent increase for now. They have to say, ‘Thank and praise God. I have a job. There’s a lot of people that don’t have employment,’” she said at the meeting. “And then looking at it too, we, as commissioners, only get $800 a month in salary, and we do a lot of work. When it’s time for the city meetings, I feel like I’m becoming an attorney because I have to read all the hundreds of pages, go through it, make sure you understand it, highlight it. If you’re being a good community commissioner, and you want to be able to represent the people the right way, and I’m speaking for myself, then that’s the work it takes.”

Brunson disagreed, calling the recommendation a “slap in the face.”

“I think that is probably the most craziest thing ever,” Brunson said. “The staff that keeps the machine running, you’re telling them that they are not due an increase.”

At the same meeting, Touchstone suggested to the commission to have the city manager conduct another survey to evaluate how much staff in other similarly-sized cities are paid. “You will see that our staff is being paid double time more than other cities our same size,” Touchstone said.

In an interview with the Herald, Brunson said she is not in favor of increasing commissioner salaries along with other spending proposals, like $10,000 for promotional items.

“I‘m fighting for our staff to make sure that they get their due diligence because without them, we’re not able to run the city,” Brunson said. “We also know that the majority rules. So I would hope and pray that they will see this from where I see it. How can we take care of ourselves if we’re not taking care of those who run and maintain the city on a daily basis?”

Six months of squabbles

While the mayor, Touchstone and concerned residents disagree with each other routinely, there is one thing everyone does agree on: West Park is in crisis.

Who is to blame, though, depends on who you ask.

In her lawsuit against the city, Touchstone alleges that after Eveillard was elected, the mayor has been arbitrarily ending meetings to avoid votes she doesn’t like, including a resolution to audit the city manager and investigate alleged corruption, and that city officials allow it to happen. She’s asking a judge to step in.

“We have been impeded in the capabilities of doing our job,” Touchstone told reporters at a press conference on Aug. 22. “We have been told that we cannot entertain new agenda items, we cannot add agenda items to the agenda. Each and every time an item comes up that the mayor is not in agreement with, she arbitrarily adjourns the meetings, which is against our charter.”

Residents say the discord on the dais —including frequent, heated exchanges— began when the three-person majority was formed. The residents who make up the West Park Strong group say they place much of the blame on Touchstone as the head of the majority. West Park Strong says the group is “team West Park,” not team mayor.

“We’ve been incorporated for 20 years. We’ve not had any of this stuff going on,” said James Sparks, a West Park resident since 1969. “Now all of a sudden, in six months, we can’t even hold a meeting without an argument. The common denominator is Katrina Touchstone.”

The mayor told the Herald that West Park has been through many difficult moments, but never something like this. Brunson agreed that much of the discord has unfolded over just the last six months. She declined to comment on Touchstone’s lawsuit but spoke generally on the lack of cooperation on the dais.

“It took us pretty much 20 years to get to this stalemate. And it is quite alarming that we are here in this space,” Brunson told the Herald. “At a time where we should be celebrating all the triumphs that we’ve made over the last 20 years, we’re stuck in a battle over dollars and cents. There is no collaborating. There is no positivity. There is nothing.”

Note: This story was updated Sept. 20 to include a statement from Vice Mayor Joy Smith.

This story was originally published September 16, 2025 at 4:30 AM.