Trying to avoid a ‘massive’ adjustment: Boise approves pay hike for mayor, City Council
This story was updated on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, to reflect the City Council’s approval of a proposal to raise the salaries of council members and the mayor. The story was first posted Dec. 17, 2024, under the headline “Trying to avoid a ‘massive’ adjustment: Boise weighs pay hike for mayor, City Council.”
For some years before 2020, Boise’s mayor and City Council members got annual 3% raises, just like the city’s staff.
But when COVID-19 hit, they lowered their own salary increases to 2% over the next couple of years — to prop up the city’s coffers until the local economy could get back on its feet.
Doing so gave the city back $60,000, Council Member Jimmy Hallyburton told the City Council in November.
Boise bounced back quickly and was able to bump up city staffers’ pay, Hallyburton said, allowing wages to rise by an average of 3.4%, per year over five years.
But the city never reverted to giving the city’s leaders 3% hikes, and their salaries gradually fell behind the area’s cost of living, salary adjustments for city staff and the pay of leaders in cities of similar size, according to a Dec. 12 memo from McLean’s chief of staff, Courtney Washburn, to McLean and the council.
In November, Hallyburton proposed a plan to get city leaders’ pay back on track with the rest of the city’s workers. But after confusion and misstatements about the actual size of the raises proposed, he pivoted, in December offering an alternate approach that divided the council. On Tuesday, Jan. 7, a divided council approved the plan — with a tie-breaking vote from Mayor Lauren McLean.
Hallyburton initially advocated for gradual raises over the next five-year period, starting in 2026, but with an initial pay hike of over 12% in one year. The goal, he said at the time, was to treat “every one of our employees exactly the same way” in Boise. The Boise mayor’s and City Council members’ salaries are set by city ordinance and approved every five years.
But after hearing “concerns” about enacting such a large increase all at once, he proposed a plan that would pencil out to a 9% salary increase for McLean and council members in 2026, a 4% raise in 2027 and 3% raises each year following through 2031.
Boise could face retention problems, council member says
As of December, McLean earned about $154,000 annually, while City Council members — who work part-time — earned about $28,000. (Readers can find a full database of Boise employees’ salaries at idahostatesman.com.) Some members of McLean’s staff earn more than she does, including Chief of Staff Courtney Washburn, who earns about $200,000.
Hallyburton noted that some members of the City Council, including himself, would not benefit directly from these raises, which won’t take effect until 2026. But he emphasized the importance of offering competitive salaries for the positions. If the city’s pay can’t keep up with the cost of living, it won’t be able to retain employees, he said.
“What happens is salaries fall further and further behind,” he said — and eventually, the city would be forced to enact a huge salary increase all at once, as has happened in other cities close to Boise in size. Spokane’s mayor earns $171,000 annually, and Salt Lake City’s mayor earns about $160,000, according to Washburn’s memo. Those cities’ council members, who also work part-time, earn over $40,000 per year.
In Idaho, Hallyburton said, “you see the Legislature asking for 19% wage increases, a 16% increase over two years that was offered to the mayor of Meridian,” he said. “They realized that if they didn’t adjust the cost of living now … they would have a massive adjustment that they would have to do five years from now.”
Council Members Hallyburton, Kathy Corless and Jordan Morales voted Jan. 7 in support of Hallyburton’s proposal. Council Members Luci Willits, Meredith Stead and Colin Nash voted against the idea, with Willits calling the raise “tone-deaf” to economic conditions.
In December, Willits said that she disapproved of trying to “catch up” with what leaders’ salaries would have been if not for the pandemic.
“I think a better option would have been to just make a standard going forward,” she told the Statesman by phone. She said she viewed elected officials’ pay differently than that of other city employees — and that it would be “self-serving” to have mayor and council salaries higher than those of the governor and part-time state legislators, who in 2024 earned $151,400 and $20,000 annually.
This story was originally published December 17, 2024 at 4:18 PM.
