Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, council members will get raises next month. See how much
.JPG "Mayor Darrell Steinberg, center, City Council members and staff listen to public comment over Zoom during the Sacramento City Council meeting Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022, the first meeting back open to public attendance at City Hall since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of the meeting and public comment focused on the citys climate goals.")
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and City Council members will receive raises in June, a city commission decided Wednesday.
The raise will put the council members into the six figures.
Steinberg’s annual salary will increase from $158,652 to $164,205 starting June 17, the city’s Compensation Commission decided. The other eight council members will receive smaller raises, from $99,317 to $102,793.
The commission landed on those numbers because it was roughly 3.5%, which was the amount of the raises most unionized city employees received last year.
The commission voted 3-1 in favor of the raises, with Chairman Arthur Scotland voting against.
“My concern is that with this uncertain budget problems in fiscal challenges facing the city in the next coming year I personally feel its not reasonable to increase the salary at this time,” said Scotland, a retired Sacramento Superior Court judge.
The city is currently in negotiations with all its unions, and has not yet made concessions, said Sally Ly, human resources manager.
Commission member Marlon Lara also raised concerns before ultimately voting in favor of the raises.
“I am concerned about the increase that is more than some city employees and how that plays out and what message we’re sending to the public about how we compensate people,” Lara said.
The city’s human resources staff recommended the amounts after analyzing salaries in comparable cities, such as San Francisco, Long Beach, Fresno, Oakland, Portland, San Diego, San Jose and Seattle. The city charter tasks the commission with setting annual salaries for the mayor and council that are “reasonable and consistent with other cities similar in size and structure.”
The commission has been granting raises to the mayor and council for the last several years. In 2019, the commission raised the council salaries a significant amount — from $71,850 to $91,915. That large jump occurred because the commission started considering the council jobs as full-time instead of part-time positions.
This story was originally published May 5, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
