LR airport exec gets bonus, 3% raise; pay now tops $ 260,000
The top executive at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/ Adams Field is getting another raise and bonus that will boost his annual compensation to more than $ 260,000 and is based on the airport’s performance last year.
Ron Mathieu, 54, who has been the airport’s executive director since 2008, will receive a 3 percent merit raise that will give him an annual salary of $ 222,400.55. He also will receive a $ 45,000 bonus and a contribution to his retirement accounts equal to 5 percent of his 2017 base salary, or about $ 11,000.
The Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission, which sets policy at Clinton National, voted 7- 0 Tuesday to award the raise and other compensation after holding an executive session that lasted just beyond an hour during the commission’s regular monthly meeting. The meeting was the first for the commission’s newest member, Jill Floyd.
“We’ve had a wonderful discussion about our incredible executive director,” commission Chairman Jim Dailey said after the commission emerged from its private meeting. “We really think he’s doing a phenomenal job. I have to tell you the words I hear back there are adjectives that each of us would love to have attributed to us, like phenomenal, financial genius, just on and on and on with all the praises.”
The commission’s vice chairman, Stacy Hurst, said that because of the airport’s performance last year, Mathieu deserved a boost in pay.
“We are financially very healthy, our enplanements are staying steady — it looks like we had a good month this
past month — our customer satisfaction is high,” Hurst said. “It reflects that he’s done a very good job.”
The airport, which is a city agency but receives no money from the city, finished 2016 with net operating income of $ 12.6 million. Boardings rose slightly to finish just under 1 million last year, making it the first year since 2012 that boardings haven’t declined.
The latest passenger satisfaction survey showed Clinton National receiving an overall satisfaction score of 97 percent in 2016, compared with an average benchmark of 85 percent among 18,000 airport evaluations conducted by Phoenix Marketing International last year.
The airport’s lowest satisfaction rankings were in food and beverage, which scored 85 percent, and retail, which got 80 percent. But airport officials say they expect those numbers to rise after the commission approved a new concession agreement that will add two national brands — Chili’s and Chick- fil- A — to the two national brands already in the airport lineup. It also plans a multimillion- dollar remodel of all of its other concessions.
At Hurst’s urging, the commission also will hire a consultant later this year to undertake a detailed review of the pay compensation of Mathieu and other airport managers, something that she said hasn’t been done in about 10 years.
“I would like a better understanding of not just comparable airports but comparable [ governing] authorities,” Hurst said. “I know there are a lot of factors that need to go into that decision. I’d like to look at all of those factors. I think it would be a timely exercise for us because we haven’t done it in a long time.”
A survey of other salaries of top executives at a dozen other airports yielded an average annual salary of $ 251,865. Mathieu’s salary in 2016 was higher than salaries for the top officials at airports in Norfolk, Va.; Tulsa; Long Beach, Calif.; Austin, Texas; and Northwest Arkansas.
The top executives at airports in Ontario, Calif; Memphis; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Birmingham, Ala.; Greenville/ Spartanburg, S. C.; Columbia, S. C.; and Jackson, Miss., all earn higher compensation than Mathieu.
The highest paid, at just under $ 400,000 annually, were at Ontario and Birmingham. The lowest- paid airport executive, at $ 181,085, was at Austin.
Mathieu undergoes an annual performance review every February.
Tuesday’s action marks the fourth year in a row that Mathieu has received a 3 percent raise. In 2014, his bonus was $ 35,000. The bonus amount has climbed by $ 5,000 in the years since. In 2013, he received a 4 percent raise and a $ 30,000 bonus.
He is among the highestpaid executives in Little Rock city government.
City Manager Bruce Moore, for example, is the fourth- highest- paid Little Rock executive. He draws an annual salary of $ 189,240 after the city Board of Directors granted him a 1.5 percent raise after his evaluation earlier this month.
Last fall, it was found that the top executives at the city’s wastewater and water departments also were making more money than Moore.
City Director Brad Cazort thought Moore’s job involved more responsibilities than those of the other top- paid executives. He introduced an ordinance last fall to create a citizens committee to evaluate the pay level of Moore and other city officials.
Mathieu said that while he was “happy and pleased” with the commission’s decision, the airport’s success is a collective effort of the entire staff.
“When the commission uses the adjectives they use, they are saying it about the entire team,” he said. “I don’t do this by myself.”