‘CEO of the city’:Peoria’s city manager receives a raise from City Council
JJ Bullock
The Peoria City Council recently voted unanimously to raise the salary for city manager Patrick Urich.
He acts in a role councilmembers refer to as the “CEO of the city,” one whose job they say is imperative to the success of Peoria.
Urich received a 3% raise on March 12, bringing his base salary to $220,149.83. Councilmembers said the raise for Urich was well-deserved and essential.
“We task him with the job of keeping his eye on the ball, and we keep our eye on the ball. There may be distractions, but we know where we want to go as a city, we have a vision for where that is,” councilmember Chuck Grayeb said of Urich’s evaluation. “We’re saying to the manager, ‘We think you’re doing a good job and that’s why we’re going to give you this raise.’”
The council also wanted to keep Urich’s salary competitive with the salaries of other city managers.
“We don’t want other similar localities, and especially if they’re smaller, to outpace our compensation for our city manager,” Mayor Rita Ali said. “We want to be competitive, we want to keep good talent.”
Bloomington’s city manager Tim Gleason got a $10,400 pay raise in 2023 that brought his salary to just under $220,000 and Normal city manager Pam Reece received a 4% raise in 2023 that brought her salary to $217,300, according to WGLT. Champaign city manager Dorothy David received a pay raise in 2023 that brought her salary to $231,205, according to the News-Gazette.
“It is important for people to understand that he is not being overpaid for what he does. He is being paid fairly. Our city council is fairly conservative in terms of compensation for city manager,” Ali said. “In the private sector, he would certainly be paid a lot more. But in the end, he loves Peoria and he is committed to the city of Peoria.”
In a city manager-mayor form of government, the city manager essentially operates as the CEO while the City Council serves as the board of directors. All city employees and departments fall under the umbrella of the city manager’s office, and the city manager reports to the council.
“This manager has never been one who has been pushing for a pay hike. I can remember at one time when he was sharing his pay increase with department heads but that no longer exists,” Grayeb said. “But he’s worked very hard and he’s worked very hard with our department heads. Think about all the demands on our department heads who report to him and are under our review as well.”
Members of the City Council are Peoria’s highest ranking elected officials, and the city manager is the city’s highest paid and most influential municipal employee. Each has a role to play in moving the city forward and one cannot do its job without the other.
“One of his strong suits is that he understands his role as city manager and our role as council members, he’s very adept at giving us choices,” city councilmember Tim Riggenbach said.
Councilman Andre Allen also said Urich does a good job of telling the council what it needs to hear, rather than what it wants to hear.
“He doesn’t tell what you want to hear, he will tell you what’s real and then from there as a council you’ve got to decide what you want to do with that information because a lot of times at the end of the day it’s a policy decision that falls on us,” Allen said. “I appreciate that.”
To evaluate Urich’s performance in 2023, the City Council used a tool called 360 assessment which allowed them to get anonymous feedback from city employees, grading him in a variety of categories, while also allowing for comment.
“Overall when you look at evaluation from the council, the mayor and his staff, which gave him really high notes this year also, he’s really received a very good evaluation this year,” councilmember Denis Cyr said. “When you research cities our size, Patrick is really not the highest paid city manager in the state of Illinois. But compared to cities our size, he is probably in the middle.”
Ali said Urich “exceeded expectations” in many areas of the evaluation.
“I rate him as a very experienced and talented city manager who I certainly rely on to help negotiate deals, to help put strategy together, whether it’s economic development or some problem solving that has to do with community development, social, economic or financial issue we have,” Ali said. “He’s a strategic problem solver, he’s a thinker and he’s quite accomplished I would say as a city manager.”
Riggenbach, who has spent parts of two decades working with Urich, both when Urich was Peoria County’s Administrator beginning in 2001 and eventually Peoria city manager in 2011, said one of the things that has made Urich such a strong leader is he has never become complacent.
“It’s easy to become complacent when you have somebody with that kind of tenure and you give him a raise and you know, some of the social media pundits might question why...well, Patrick is the third city manager where I’ve been part of the hiring process and let me tell you, what he brings to the table is stability, he brings quality and he gives us the choice to make the decisions that are best for the city,” Riggenbach said.
Multiple councilmembers also said a key part of Urich’s evaluation is his strong reputation among city managers and municipal employees statewide.
“When you go to local government conferences and you mention the city of Peoria, nine times out of 10, people are going to mention Rep. Jehan Gordon Booth, Mayor Ali and Patrick Urich, and that is great,” Allen said.
Cyr echoed a similar sentiment. “Patrick is very well respected in his arena,” Cyr said. “He’s got a lot of experience and has accomplished a lot, I think, in the time he’s been with the county and the city.”