The newly seated Cape Coral City Council repealed a resolution that had doubled the paychecks of the previous Council.

The motion to repeal Resolution 351-23, which created a council stipend in addition to council salaries, passed 5-3 with all new members voting in favor and Mayor John Gunter and council members Keith Long and Bill Steinke voting against.

Councilmember Donald Donnell brought the stipend to the table as part of his first council member report.

“I would love for this new council to get this stipend thing done and moved off our plate. We just have to deal with it. It is not going to go away,” Donnell said.

Once the correct verbiage was presented by the city attorney, Councilmember Laurie Lehmann made the motion to repeal the stipend.

The stipend passed as part of Council’s consent agenda in December 2023 establishing a payment of $5,000 per month for the mayor and $3,333 per month for city council members in addition to their salaries, which are governed by a voter-approved provision of the city charter.

The repeal takes effect immediately with City Attorney Aleksandr Boksner to bring back a formal resolution.

Before the vote was taken, there was a great deal of discussion around the type of meetings at which things can take place, including the naming a mayor pro tem, which could not be done Wednesday, as Council failed to do during its first meeting after the city’s general election, which was held before the newly elected members were sworn in.

Long asked for clarification as to whether the legal interpretation pertaining to the mayor pro tem also would apply to Council’s ability to vote on a repeal of the stipend resolution as it appeared the subjected might be legally tied.

Boksner said they were substantively different.

“The (Council) rules have ‘organization meeting’ as well,” he said. “This is the organizational meeting of the council and this would be the time where action would be taken.”

Boksner said the charter was not what controls the matter, but rather the stipend, which is talking about the organizational meeting, which is where adjustments and modifications can be done.

“We don’t have anything about a stipend in our charter,” Nelson said. It’s pretty clear in the ordinance — clearly stated it could be done in an organizational meeting.”