EASTHAMPTON — The mayor, members of the School Committee and the City Council president would be in line for a bump in pay in 2022 should the council approve the raises at its meeting Wednesday night.
The plan calls for the mayor to be paid $90,000 a year, up 20% from the current salary of $75,000. If approved, it would be first mayoral salary increase since 2016, when the salary went from $70,000 to $75,000, a roughly 7% increase.
City Councilor Thomas Peake and others said it’s imperative that the city pay a high enough salary to attract quality candidates.
“It is no small task to find a chief executive for an organization the size of the city of Easthampton,” Peake said.
Easthampton’s population is about 16,000. By comparison, the mayor of Northampton, with a population of 28,700, makes $92,500 a year, while Holyoke’s mayor is paid $85,000 governing a population of about 40,000. On the high end, Amherst, with a population of nearly 38,000, pays its town administrator $183,000 a year. That position, however, is not an elected one.
Other raises set to be voted on Wednesday include increasing the City Council president’s salary from $4,000 a year, the same as the other councilors, to $4,500 a year, and raising the salaries of School Committee members from $1,400 a year to $2,000 a year.
The pay increases for all of these positions would not take effect until Jan. 2, 2022, after the 2021 municipal elections have taken place in the city.
“Per our charter, we can’t give ourselves a raise,” Peake said.
City Councilor Daniel Rist, who chairs the council’s Finance Committee, where the raises were drafted, noted that the council can only vote on increases in the first year of its term.
Peake said the job of mayor requires working more than 40 hours a week to be done right.
“It’s like you’re working a job and a half or two jobs,” he said.
Peake described the proposed increase as a cost-of-living adjustment, and Rist said that the city going to a four-year mayoral term means that if a raise isn’t approved this year, a raise for the mayor won’t be able to go into effect until 2026.
Rist said that increasing the mayoral salary “might get more people to run” for the position.
“This increases competition,” he said.
He also said that if the city was able to give a cost-of-living increase over 10 years, from 2016 to 2026, this would be less than a 2% increase a year.
Rist also said that Nicole LaChapelle, the current mayor, “had nothing to do with this,” and didn’t participate in the Finance Committee discussions where the increases were drafted.
LaChapelle would have to be reelected next year in order to enjoy the raise being proposed.
Asked about the increases, LaChapelle said that it is appropriate to examine the compensation for the positions, and she said that the responsibilities for elected officials have increased. She also said she wasn’t taking a position on the increases.
“It’s a legislative function,” she said.
That said, LaChapelle did say that the increases would allow more people to consider public service.
Rist said that other increases, including to salaries of the Board of Public Works members, were considered, but were ultimately not put forward.
Peake said that he always found it a bit “rude” how much less School Committee members make than city councilors.
“Giving them $600 more a year was the least we could do,” said Rist, echoing Peak’s sentiments.
As for the City Council president position, Peake said the proposed increase was an acknowledgment of the extra work involved.
The City Council meeting, which will have a public comment period, begins at 6 p.m. and is being conducted over the videoconferencing application Zoom.
Bera Dunau can be reached at bdunau@gazettenet.com.