Sacramento approves new city manager contract. How does it compare to previous one?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- City Council approved a three-year contract for Maraskeshia Smith at $399,000.
- Contract includes $50,000 relocation, $500 monthly auto stipend, 160 leave hours.
- Her pay exceeds predecessor base but omits large leave cash-outs that inflated totals.
Sacramento’s new city manager Maraskeshia Smith will receive a higher salary than her predecessor, but without some of the benefits that helped make the state capital’s former city manager one of the highest paid city employees in California.
The City Council officially approved Smith’s contract on Tuesday night — two weeks after it was announced that she would fill the influential role. Smith, who was not in attendance at the council meeting, will become the first Black woman to hold the position when she begins work on Jan. 5.
“I want to thank each one of you as well for your support in hiring what I think will be an excellent city manager,” said Councilmember Rick Jennings. “We are looking forward to her arrival.”
Smith’s contract is for three years at an annual salary of $399,000. If terminated, she would receive nine months of base pay.
Other employment benefits include a $500 monthly car stipend, $50,000 relocation allowance and 160 hours of management leave, which is additional compensation for city executives exempt from earning overtime. Smith can cash out 40 of those hours in the upcoming calendar year.
Leave hours became a significant source of controversy during former City Manager Howard Chan’s tenure. Chan frequently cashed out management, sick and vacation hours, which inflated his total wages to among the highest in the state for city employees.
Chan’s contract, approved by the City Council in February 2017, started him at $282,000 per year. He received raises in the following years that upped his annual base salary to about $367,000.
Alongside those raises, Chan was also granted weeks of management leave. In 2022 alone, the City Council gave him a total of 64 weeks, according to previous reporting from The Bee.
Using those hours, Chan’s total earnings rose from $305,000 in 2018 to $789,000 in 2024, according to the California State Controller’s office. That total pay made him the second highest paid city employee in the state last year.
Smith will relocate to Sacramento from Santa Rosa, where she was the city manager for nearly four years. Before then, she was the deputy city manager in Stockton and assistant city administrator in Oakland. Smith, a native of Kentucky, also spent about 10 years working for the city of Cincinnati.
This story was originally published October 15, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
