A subcommittee tasked with recommending changes to City Council salaries has adjusted its initial proposal, which suggested raising salaries from the current $45,700 to as high as $125,000 per year.
It’s now recommending that council members be paid $80,000 per year, and the mayor $95,000 per year. The group’s original suggested pay for the mayor was between $90,000 and $140,000 per year.
Thursday’s presentation of the new recommendations came after numerous community members made their complaints known about the initial proposal, which the subcommittee said aimed to take into account council members’ broad responsibilities and time commitments.
While members of the Charter Review Commission still hope to accomplish that in some form, “We heard what the community was saying, and we also knew that making the jump from $45,000 to $120,000 was not feasible, and it was not prudent,” said Luisa Casso, chair of the subcommittee on City Council compensation and term length, who presented the new recommendations Thursday.
“We are making the adjustment and we went back to the drawing board,” she added,
Last week the commission’s co-chair Bonnie Prosser Elder said the first proposal had “picked up a lot of buzz” and the commission had received significant feedback about it. Co-chair David Zammiello suggested a messaging campaign might be necessary to accompany substantial changes to the council salaries, since any City Charter changes would have to be approved by voters on the Nov. 5 ballot.
The commission has also received lots of feedback about its plans to undo limitations on the city manager’s pay, which as of Thursday, still appeared likely to move forward.
Voters in 2018 approved capping the city manager’s salary at 10 times the amount of the lowest-paid full-time city employee — something a Charter Review Commission subcommittee has said hinders the city’s hiring competitiveness.
Dozens of speakers over the past two months have attended their meetings at the Central Library to say City Manager Erik Walsh’s current salary of $374,400 is high enough in a city where so many residents struggle financially. Others have suggested the city already has the power to raise the city manager’s salary by raising wages for city employees.
“After much discussion, the panelists were in unanimous agreement,” said Pat Frost, the former Frost Bank president who chairs the subcommittee overseeing that issue.
“We share the same wish, that people who are paid below the poverty level should — we should figure out as a city — how to have them paid more, but it’s not tied to our city manager’s salary,” he said.
Thursday was the last opportunity for public comment before the commission finalizes its proposals in May. The recommendations would then go to the City Council for approval.
San Antonio City Council pay
Feedback the commission received about wage equity did appear to have some impact on its council salary configuration.
The current salaries were established in 2015, set to the city’s area median income at the time. But the voter-approved change did not index those salaries, meaning they have not risen with the AMI, which is now closer to $60,000.
Under the latest proposal, council’s pay would see a one-time increase after the 2025 municipal election, matching it to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ median income for management and professional occupations in San Antonio-New Braunfels metropolitan area, which is roughly $80,000.
The subcommittee wanted to move away from AMI in order to take into account council members’ management responsibilities, said Casso, who is the chief of staff for the president’s office at Trinity University. But their initial proposal made that change by basing the salaries against director-level positions at the city, which put the salary range higher than the public was comfortable with, she said.
After setting the new base at $80,000 for council and $95,000 for the mayor, the salaries would automatically increase each year based on the average percentage raise given to civilian city employees.
“If the city budget is healthy, then the workforce and the city leaders could afford a wage increase,” the subcommittee’s presentation reasoned. “But if the workforce does not receive a raise, neither should the elected officials.”
This piece of the commission’s work seemed susceptible to additional changes in the coming weeks. Members of the full commission wanted to know whether council members could decline the raises, and whether a different metric should be used to set the new base salary.
City manager compensation, tenure
In addition to removing the salary restrictions, the commission is looking at getting rid of a tenure cap also instituted in 2021. Both measures came in response to frustration the firefighters’ union had with then-City Manager Sheryl Sculley.
Frost said his subcommittee was less interested in making the changes to retain Walsh, who could no longer serve after 2027 given the current rules, and more interested in making the role comparable to the private sector, where salary-setting authority and tenure length are set by the people hiring for the position.
In this case, City Council hires the city manager, and the limitations could hurt their ability to recruit top national talent for the role, he said.
While that idea has the support of the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce and North San Antonio Chamber leaders who could fund the campaign behind it, it’s also created some unlikely allies pushing back against it at public comment sessions.
Ananda Tomas, a progressive activist, told the commission at a meeting earlier this month that she believes San Antonio’s next city manager should be someone from the community who can relate to residents’ struggles, not a candidate from elsewhere in the country seeking executive-level pay.
“That makes two of us,” Republican activist Betty Eckert chimed in from the audience.
City staff ability to campaign
City staff and the union that represents them, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, have been pushing for the commission to eliminate a prohibition on participating in political campaigns that’s written in the City Charter.
At Thursday’s meeting Shelley Potter, a former San Antonio ISD union leader who serves on the commission, volunteered to start compiling research for a formal recommendation on that topic.
“It’s a compelling issue to me, not only because of my union background, but because of the efforts I see happening around the country,” Potter said. “It seems like we’re limiting people’s participation in the Democratic process.”
But that idea wasn’t part of the Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s initial charge, and Zammiello said all additional proposals must wait to the end of the process. It could be considered at the May 20 or May 23 meeting if all of the other charges have been addressed.
Casso seconded the idea that the commission should get ahead of the issue and have a proposal at the ready.
Special meeting authority
Nirenberg’s late request for the commission to consider reining in council’s ability to call special meetings has been formally discarded by the subcommittee overseeing that issue.
Pro-Palestine activists who attended the public comment sessions saw Nirenberg’s request as a rebuke of their efforts to get a special meeting to discuss a cease-fire resolution.
Complaints about the process
Forty people signed up to speak at the last public input meeting Thursday night, including many who had already spoken at earlier meetings.
One group that has attended every public input session, the UP Partnership, wants the commission to explore committing a share of the city’s future budget growth to programs that help children.
City staff cut speakers’ three-minute time allowance down to two minutes per person for the second meeting in a row to limit the span of a nearly four-hour meeting.
Grace Rose Gonzales, who has served on a number of city commissions, said she heard about the meeting “by chance,” and was disappointed they’d hold the last public comment session during Fiesta.
“That isn’t the way any of us have worked together,” she said. “You have all of these things that are coming up from the grassroots. The grassroots are becoming stronger, and their voices are going to be heard.”
Disclosure: UP Partnership is a financial supporter of the San Antonio Report, and Pat Frost is a member of the organization’s board of directors. For a full list of business members, click here.
