City Council deserves a raise, but how much?
It took more than 60 years for the San Antonio mayor and City Council to get its first pay raise. Less than 10 years later, they could get a second major increase. “Pay” is too generous a word for the compensation established in the city charter in 1951. The annual wages or stipend was set at $1,040 for council members and $4,040 for mayor.
Fast forward through the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, a new millennium and then the second decade of the new millennium. The city changed and grew, and the responsibilities of City Council and the mayor changed and grew.
What didn’t change and grow was their compensation. The $20 per meeting that council members received when San Antonio was the 25th-largest city in the nation was the same
$20 per week they received when San Antonio was the seventh-largest city in the nation.
That changed in 2015 when San Antonio voters approved an amendment to the charter allowing council members to be paid $45,722, equal to the San Antonio area median income, and for the mayor to be paid $61,725.
There are two arguments for council members to receive a livable salary for their work.
The first is that the work they do is a full-time job consuming 50 to 60 hours a week. They do more than gather on the dais in council chambers on Thursday mornings to vote on items. The countless meetings they attend, including nighttime appearances before neighborhood associations in their district, show that of the many responsibilities of council members, the primary one is constituent services.
The second argument for a salary reflecting the full-time work of council members is that the lack of pay limited the pool of people who wished to serve but couldn’t take time away from their jobs. Only those with the resources or a second household income could devote the time necessary to serve on City Council.
San Antonio voters, having affirmed that the work of City Council and the mayor is full time and should paid as such, will likely have the chance to decide if those jobs are deserving of a raise.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg appointed 15 people to his Charter Review Commission to explore and recommend changes in mayor and council pay, length of terms, and the compensation and tenure of the city manager.
The commission recommended that the salary of council members and the mayor be set at a percentage of median pay of “city directors” such as department heads, and San Antonio’s police and fire chiefs. On the low end of the scale, council members would earn $75,000 and the mayor $90,000. On the high end, council members would earn $125,000 and the mayor would make $140,000.
The Charter Review Commission will finalize the recommendations in late May and present them to Nirenberg and the City Council, who will decide which charter amendments will be on the Nov. 5 ballot.
It’s telling that three council members, Jalen Mckee-rodriguez, John Courage (a mayoral candidate for 2025) and Manny Pelaez (a presumptive mayoral candidate) have already voiced their objections to the six-figure salaries for council members.
The salaries of council members and the mayor should be raised, and a strong argument can be made they should receive six-figure salaries. But will voters, only a decade removed from paying council members $20 a week, flinch at so much of a raise?
Two arguments can be made for a livable wage