Richmond’s City Council plans to discuss giving itself an 80% raise at tonight’s meeting.
The agenda item says the council will consider paying city council members $2,524.50 per month and the mayor $6,975 a month. If the initial reading of the amendment to the council’s pay ordinance is approved, it would be voted on at a future meeting.
According to the item, the proposed ordinance to increase the Mayor’s monthly salary must be adopted a yes vote of four members of the City Council, not including the mayor.
Richmond city council members currently are paid $1,402.50 per month while the mayor makes $3,875 a month. Additionally, council members and the mayor receive $300 and $350 monthly allowances, respectively.
California City councils are allowed raises of up to a maximum of 5% per year dating back to the date of their last raise, according to California Senate Bill 329, which was amended in 2023 when it was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The last time that the Richmond council and mayor received pay increases was in April 2007. Prior to that, raises were given in 2000 and 1915 — when council members were initially given $50 per month salaries.
According to the proposal, the raises would cost the city an estimated $117,984 a year.
The raise is being requested based on “the substantial increase in the cost of living in the Bay Area since the last salary increase in 2007, and to make the City’s elected officials’ compensation equitable and commensurate with comparable cities.”
According to a Bay Area Cities Council Compensation Survey, the raise would make Richmond’s elected officials the second highest paid in the region, with Berkeley’s being the highest, for Bay Area cities with populations of 100,000 to 200,000. Richmond’s population is 116,448 residents while Berkeley’s is 124,321.
The raise would also make elected city officials the highest paid in Contra Costa County. In Antioch, where the population is 115,580, council members — including the mayor — are paid $1,600 per month. Concord, a city of 125,410, pays its council members $1,352 per month.
Richmond City Attorney Dave Aleshire, Chief Assistant City Attorney Shannon Moore, Deputy City Manager Nickie Mastay and Human Resources Director Sharron Taylor were attributed as those who are suggesting the pay hike.
Aleshire, Mastay and Taylor were contacted for comment but did not respond by publication time.
Previously, a pay increase proposal was scheduled to be discussed at the Feb. 6, 2024 meeting. However, the topic was continued to Feb. 27, 2024 by Mayor Eduardo Martinez but wasn’t discussed during that meeting. Both Moore and Mastay were named as those who prepared that item for the agenda.
According to the online inflation calculator, that $50 from 1915 would be worth $1,561.85 today.
Here my comments to the Council from last night:
I’ve been a member of the largest and most powerful building trades union west of Chicago for 54 years and most of those years I’ve been a person of importance.
Some of my duties included negotiating contracts for my members. As you might imagine, working conditions were important but wages and benefits are more important.
At every single contract negotiation where financial compensation was on the table, we ALWAYS had to defend ourselves when asked why we were deserving of a wage increase.
And here we come to these negotiations except there isn’t any real negotiating going on here. What we have are the employees saying that they want an 80% pay increase and then they get to vote on whether to award themselves that wage increase. Outside of elected officials, in what world does this make sense?
I love the comparables tables included in the agenda packet. With the exception of Berkeley—which has turned their council positions into full time jobs—almost all of the cities of comparable size are paid a similar wage to what this Council is being paid.
Several of the cities—Fairfield, Santa Rosa and Vacaville actually pay about half what we pay.
But let’s get back to that question about what you all have done to qualify for a higher wage.
As I’ve mentioned many times in the past, getting our elected representatives to respond to emails, texts, phone messages and even letters is next to impossible.
As an elected representative, shouldn’t it be a high priority for you to actually speak with the people you’re supposed to represent? How can you claim to speak FOR the people when you rarely speak WITH the people?
I was at a public meeting about 15 months back and heard an interesting presentation on traffic calming techniques. I sent several emails to that Councilmember asking for more information so I could write a story about it. Guess what—I’m still waiting.
About 7 months back I was at a community meeting where one of you was the featured speaker. I spoke of the difficulties in opening up lines of communication with our elected representatives and asked what might be done to alleviate this ongoing problem. The response was that if we paid you more money you might pick up the phone. You can imagine the shock with that response. I suspect it was flippant and in jest but at the same time I suspect there was some sincerity to it, too.
I’m sorry but I’m not seeing anything that would justify an 80% increase.
Explain what union job pays as low as $2500 a month. Aren’t union members supposed to be against exploiting people to answer windy emails for next to nothing?
If we drop the highest and lowest from the list the average is $1615/mo. Only slightly higher than Richmond. Several of these cities have significantly more residents than Richmond’s 116,245 [Hayward~163,000, Santa Rosa~178,000 and Sunnyvale~158,000].
Good to see Richmond being a leader in seeking cost of living increase for these insulting figures.
One of the ‘friends’ of the Council spoke from the audience that this measure was pushed entirely by staff.
Why would staff push a pay issue for someone outside of their body (unless it’s hoping for quid pro quo when they want more pay). After hearing from each and every member of the Council about how much time they put in and how hard they work for the paltry compensation they’re offered, it’s kind of tough to buy into this being staff driven.
Weird thought but did you ever consider that maybe people aren’t always selfish.