Thoughts from a resident, data edition

These comments were made by Maggie McKee at a standout against the raises in front of City Hall on May 29, 2024 (before the council voted on them).

Hi, everyone. My name is Maggie, and I live here in Quincy with my family.

I want to start out by saying that I am not opposed to salary increases for our elected officials. I believe that all employees should get cost of living adjustments regularly, and the fact that this does not happen now is, I think, a fault in the system.

But the mayor is not proposing a different system, one that would tie his salary increases to, say, annual rates of inflation or teacher contract changes. He is simply asking city councilors to vote for a 79% raise for him, from $159,000 to $285,000. The basis for this request is a mayoral compensation review done by the City’s Finance Department.

But I do not think the council should vote for the mayor’s proposed change. That’s because the amount of the raise is far outside of state – and national – norms.

The city’s compensation review lists 42 salaries for what it calls “chief administrative officers” of relatively small Massachusetts communities, with populations smaller than two-thirds that of Quincy. The salaries of these communities’ leaders range from $98,000 (Southampton) to $293,000 (Plymouth), amounts that make $285,000 seem quite reasonable for a leader of Quincy’s larger size.

The problem is, none of the 42 communities selected have Quincy’s form of government. 

Massachusetts cities and towns can choose from a bewildering menu of government types. Quincy has a “plan A” government with a mayor and a city council, for example, while Plymouth has a representative town meeting form of government, with 135 representatives elected from the city’s precincts, five elected select board members, and a town manager appointed by the select board.

All of the 42 communities list “manager” or “administrator” as the title of their city’s CEO. These positions are hired by an elected council, which can set the desired experiences and qualifications for the position – and can remove the manager at any time through a vote. Like business consultants with expertise in a particular field, these managers are workers whose contracts can be ended if their performance falls below expectations. And as a result, they seem to command salaries more in line with the private sector. Plymouth’s town manager, for example, has a master’s degree in public administration and worked as director of administration and public health in Worcester and town manager of Upton before taking the top job in Plymouth.

Quincy follows a different model. Its residents vote for mayoral candidates who can collect the required 50 certified signatures to run for office. Any eligible candidate who receives the most votes wins the seat, regardless of their level of education or prior experience. And then they serve for a set term (in typical plan A governments, that term is two years; in Quincy, it’s four).

So how much do these directly elected mayors make? I looked up the 15 plan A cities listed in the Massachusetts Municipal Association directory. Their average population is 108,000 and their average mayoral salary is $140,000. 

Quincy, with a population of 102,000 and a mayoral salary of $159,141, is currently very much in line with those averages. But if the city council votes to increase the mayor’s salary by 79% – to $285,000 – it will be far out of line.

Not only that, but the mayor’s requested salary would be higher than that of Governor Healey, who makes $222,000, and our two US senators, Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, who each make $174,000. 

And it would be higher than the mayors of nine out of ten of the largest US cities, which have populations ranging from 10 to 82 times Quincy’s size.

For Quincy’s mayor to potentially make more than all of those positions seems unfair, even egregious. But what troubles me the most is the fact that he felt entitled to ask for that much money in the first place. In our plan A government, also known as a “strong mayor - weak council” system, the mayor holds nearly all the power, appointing department heads and members of city boards that rule on any manner of issues. Asking for a 79% raise seems like a brazen display of unassailable power, and I can’t imagine many of us have had the temerity to request the same of our bosses.

But our tax dollars pay for the city’s expenses, and I hope that we will all raise our voices to tell our elected leaders how we want our money spent.