The Welsh Board of Aldermen on Tuesday voted to increase the pay for the next mayor and slate of aldermen beginning in January.

The increase will push the next mayor’s salary from $1,500 a month to $2,300 a month, or $27,600 a year. Salaries for the board’s five aldermen will increase from $300 to $400 a month, or $4,800 annually.

It is the first pay raise to be approved for the mayor and aldermen since 2013.

During public hearing on the proposed increases, resident Marshall Jackson questioned why the board was bringing the pay raises up after being in office for four years and just months before the municipal election.

“You have to do it before the election,” Aldermen Lawrence Mier. “So whoever wins, it could be anybody. It could be all of us, but whoever wins they come into it.”

Mier said he has been working to get pay raises for elected officials since he took office, but was told he had to wait till the next elections because aldermen could not give themselves a pay raise.

State law requires that municipalities set the salaries for elected offices before the start of the next term so that elected officials do not adjust their own salary while still in office.

Mayor Karl Arceneaux, who was re-elected without opposition at the end of the qualifying period in July, said the pay raise will be for elected officials taking office on Jan. 1, 2025.

“This increase will reflect in January,” Arceneaux said. “We can’t vote ourselves a raise while we are in office.”

Arceneaux said the increase is a cost-of-living adjustment for inflation which has risen 33 percent since 2013 when the last pay raises for the mayor and aldermen were approved.

“We just want the same money that they were getting in 2013,” he said.

Alderwoman Andrea King said last month that the increase would better align the mayor and aldermen’s pay with the surrounding municipalities.

King is among seven candidates, including four incumbent aldermen, who are seeking a seat on the five-member board in the Nov, 5 municipal election.

Last month, the board approved a $1 across-the-board cost-of-living increase for all hourly town employees, including 12 maintenance employees and five office staff.