The legal and finance committee of the Rapid City Council meets this afternoon and on the agenda is, again, salary increases for council members and the mayor.

We say again, because salary increases have been a controversial topic of discussion for the mayor, city council members and city employees.

Last year, a controversy revolved around a reference to an ongoing 3 percent cost-of-living adjustment for the mayor and council members. That language was finally stricken from the salary resolution alleviating that issue. But raises, it appears, could still be an annual event.

City salaries have shown consistent growth since the early 1990s. For elected officials, the mayor's salary has increased from $55,000 (1994) to $95,000 today. And council members salaries increased from $9,300 to $15,000.

The generous salary received by the city mayor begs the question: Are taxpayers seeing their money best spent at city hall?

Like we said, the Rapid City mayor is paid extremely well. Essentially, taxpayers are paying a high salary to someone to run the city that isn't required to have the qualifications to do so. At some point, we have to ask if it would be wiser to hire a city manager.

We won't downplay the mayor's commitment to the position - it is time consuming and challenging. Unfortunately, by the time a mayor is "trained" to the position, he or she may be gone.

A trained city manager would be immune from the election cycles. The person would also be trained in making decisions based more on government operation than the operation of a local business, which is the background many mayoral candidates have.

In March, the editorial board questioned the absence of a city manager for Rapid City. That was in response to a story, which captured an obvious inefficiency in city government: Four council members were sent to Washington, D.C. for a conference costing the taxpayers around $10,000. The question at the time was if that money would be better invested in a city manager.

"For now," we wrote in March, "we'll merely suggest that it is a cost that causes us to wonder whether Rapid Citians would be better served under a city manager-council form of municipal governance than the current mayor-council system."

Watching the salaries of our elected representatives increase, again, we ask that question.

With a city manager in place, the training investment would continue to take place but it would be an investment in one man or woman who wouldn't necessarily change at each election.

And, to better represent the needs of the community, we would suggest a very modest salary for the mayor while bringing a highly qualified manager on board.

A professional city manager assisted by a less powerful council-mayor system could be an investment the Rapid City Council should be ready to make.