Benefits may put full-time mayor’s pay near $250K

Pension, insurance would add about 40% to salary of Santa Fe leader next year

Pension and other benefits would add about 40 percent to the compensation package for Santa Fe’s full-time mayor next year, including a salary that a city commission is considering setting at between $145,000 and $175,000 a year.

The Independent Salary Commission is asking the public to weigh in on what the mayor should be paid when the part-time policymaking and ceremonial position becomes a full-time chief executive job next March. Before making its final decision May 24, the panel has scheduled a meeting to solicit public input at 6:30 p.m. May 17 at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center.

If the seven-member commission was to set the mayor’s salary at $145,000 a year, the cost of benefits would be about $61,000, bringing total compensation to $206,000 a year.

If the commission sets the salary at $175,000 a year, total compensation would reach nearly a quarter-million-dollars when about $71,200 worth of benefits, such as health and dental insurance and contributions to the Public Employees Retirement Association, are factored in.

“I don’t think they’re surprising,” commission chairman Paul Hultin said Tuesday about the cost of the benefits.

“They’re not dissimilar from other public officials’ throughout the country.”

Hultin said the commission, which was appointed last year by Mayor Javier Gonzales with the unanimous approval of the eight-member City Council, did not include the cost of benefits in proposing a salary range because “it’s my understanding that the benefits are essentially the same for all city employees.”

“Benefits for insurance, retirement, Social Security and other is part of everybody’s compensation, including all the people that work for The New Mexican,” he said. “I’m interested in knowing how your benefits compare to the city benefits.”

The New Mexican, which first reported on the proposed salary range in Tuesday’s edition, subsequently found discrepancies in data that the commission used to develop its proposal. For example, the commission listed the salary of the mayor in Provo, Utah, as $155,307, but officials there said Tuesday the salary is actually $109,500. The salary of the mayor of Missoula, Mont., was listed as $83,174 when, in fact, the salary is $86,533.

The research on the salaries of full-time mayors in comparable cities in the West was compiled by three undergraduate students from The University of New Mexico who served as interns for the commission.

Hultin said the commission did not verify the numbers before releasing the information to the public.

“We did ask that the sources of that information be identified so that it could be verified, but we didn’t independently go out and doublecheck that research,” he said.

“I think they were working off of websites, published information in the public domain,” he said. “I don’t think they called the personnel departments and asked questions. That’s my understanding of the methodology.”

The students identified eight cities of “comparable size, living costs and diversity within the region” as dictated in the resolution that established the commission. In setting the salary range, the commission decided to eliminate the city with the highest salary for a mayor, Salt Lake City, and the city with the lowest salary for a mayor, Pocatello, Idaho. Those cities pay their mayors $181,934 and $40,269, respectively, according to data compiled by the commission.

The list of comparable cities didn’t include Las Cruces or Rio Rancho, even though they are similar in population to Santa Fe. Hultin said those cities were left off the list because they “are not full-time mayor CEO cities.”

Hultin took exception to a graphic in The New Mexican on Tuesday that included those two cities, as well as the city of Albuquerque, which he said wasn’t included in the comparison because its population is significantly larger than Santa Fe’s. Albuquerque’s mayor is paid $125,000 a year, while Las Cruces’ mayor is paid $73,892 and Rio Rancho’s is currently paid $30,402.

“We were given direct instructions by the unanimous City Council that this is the job that we had to do and this is how we were to do it,” said Hultin, an attorney. “We’ve done that, and we’ve tried to be analytical and compare apples to apples, and to put in Las Cruces and Rio Rancho in the same chart with the other comparable [cities] that we had is to put some grapes in there with the apples, and it’s not right. It’s misleading.”

Members of the commission, which has been meeting since March, have struggled with setting a salary for the mayor without knowing whether City Hall would continue to have a city manager and a deputy city manager when the position of mayor becomes full-time with expanded powers. City Manager Brian Snyder makes $142,812 a year, and Deputy City Manager Renée Martínez, who is paid $130,000 a year.

The resolution the city governing body approved in establishing the commission calls on the panel only to look at the salaries of mayors in comparable cities, and other public executives within Santa Fe County, including the county manager and the superintendent of schools. According to information compiled by the city Human Resources Department, Santa Fe County Manager Katherine Miller is paid $179,707 a year while Veronica García, superintendent of Santa Fe Public Schools, makes $163,363 a year.

The comparable cities the commission used to set a salary range typically have a chief of staff or a chief administrative officer who helps oversee day-to-day operations.

In Provo, Utah, the mayor has a chief administrative officer, which state statute requires under a strong-mayor form of government, as well as a deputy mayor, who is predominantly responsible for intergovernmental and public relations.

Wayne Parker, Provo’s chief administrative officer, said he and that city’s mayor work handin-hand.

“The mayor is the chief executive officer so he has ultimate responsibility for the city administration,” Parker said. “My job predominantly is to pick up and put focus in areas where he needs them. But I’m in a direct supervisory role.”

A spokeswoman for at least one of those cities — Missoula, Mont., which pays its mayor $86,533 — said its mayor is very hands-on.

“Our mayor is extremely engaged in running the city day-to-day,” Ginny Merriam said. “We also have a chief administrative officer, and that person is similar to a city manager except that since we have a strong-mayor form of government, it’s the mayor who provides the leadership and the long-term vision.”

Merriam said the Missoula mayor runs weekly City Council meetings but only votes in the event of a tie.

“We really enjoy having two strong leaders at the head of the city because, in effect, that’s what happens,” she said. “I like having that brain power.”

Santa Fe voters in 2014 approved a city charter amendment that called for a full-time mayor with a salary set at $74,000 until the city’s governing body created a commission to establish what the position should pay.