This Tuesday’s session of the Slidell City Council will be a busy one, and maybe quite contentious.

There will be two pieces of legislation that concerns the pay of both elected officials and city employees.

First, there will be a tabled item from the June 9 meeting on lowering the pay rate of the mayor and police chief, and keeping council members’ pay the same. At the last meeting, the council wanted to lower the mayor’s pay from $104,000 to $90,000 a year. The chief of police pay would be lowered from $93,791 to $81,000. The pay for a council member would stay at $18,750. Some on the council said they wanted to bring the mayor’s pay in line with other mayors’ salaries across the state for the same size city as Slidell. Currently, the mayors of Slidell, Baton Rouge and New Orleans are the only three that make over $100,000 a year. The bill was tabled so that the council could research the pay of the council and see if it should be raised or lowered. In another pay-related issue, the council will discuss an ordinance that will not give city employees their step raise this year. The council cites the bleak economy and the projection that sales tax revenue will be a lot smaller this year as the reasons for not implementing the pay raise.

At the June 9 meeting, Mayor Ben Morris said that he also would not implement the step raise as part of a series of budget cuts that trimmed down the 2010 city budget by $710,000.

The rescinding of the step pay raise is related to another proposed ordinance that caps city salaries and benefits at 55 percent of the total recurring revenues, again, because of the decrease in sales tax revenue and the continuing downturn of the national economy.

The council will also consider an ordinance that would ban video bingo in the city.

This follows a St. Tammany Parish Council ordinance June 4 that banned video bingo in unincorporated areas of the parish. State law states that video bingo is allowed for non-profit and charitable organizations if the parish and municipality agree to it. However, a big outcry from a community that fears any form of gambling would lead to legalization of gaming in the parish has prompted the parish council and now the Slidell council to ban video bingo entirely.

Probably the least controversial issue at Tuesday’s meeting will be the election of president and vice-president of the council for the next six months. Current Council President Richey Hursey and Vice- President Lionel Hicks are expected to be re-elected to the posts.