Santa Clara officials get raises but no performance reviews

Several Santa Clara officials are receiving pay raises following a routine City Council vote that turned into a debate over the city’s handling of performance reviews for its top leaders.

Councilmembers on July 6 voted 5-1-1 to adopt updated salary plans for the mayor and council, city clerk, city attorney and city manager to comply with state pension reporting requirements. District 5 Councilmember Suds Jain voted against it and District 4 Councilmember Kevin Park abstained from voting.

Effective July 1, the mayor’s monthly salary has increased from $2,625 to $2,750, councilmembers’ salaries from $2,100 to $2,200 and the city clerk’s salary from $1,575 to $1,650. While the city manager and city attorney received 2% increases, it is unclear how much more a month they will earn. They will earn annual salaries of more than $439,382 and $377,870, respectively.

Jain and Park questioned why the city manager and attorney received salary increases after going years without formal performance evaluations. Jain said he was trying to highlight what he views as inconsistent treatment of the city’s top appointed officials.

“The reason I brought it up was to raise awareness,” Jain told San José Spotlight. “If we’re only willing to give the city manager a 2% raise, why are (the mayor and councilmembers) taking a 4.76% raise?”

Mayor Lisa Gillmor disagreed with Jain and said the council’s salaries are set independently rather than through employee performance evaluations.

“I’m really happy we have an independent Salary Setting Commission because it’s not supposed to be political and get political, like all of this up here,” Gillmor said at the meeting.

Jain wanted to reduce raises for the mayor and councilmembers, but staff told him council lacked the power to do so. City Attorney Glen Googins said the Salary Setting Commission determines compensation for the mayor and councilmembers, as well as the city clerk and police chief.

“The Salary Setting Commission sets your salaries. I don’t think the council can act collectively in any way to modify that based on the charter language,” Googins said at the meeting.

The debate comes as executive compensation has remained a contentious issue in Santa Clara. Former City Manager Deanna Santana received one of the city’s highest-paid compensation packages before she was fired in 2022. City Manager Jōvan Grogan was hired in 2023 with a slightly lower base salary of $405,056 compared to Santana’s $448,000 base salary in 2020. Googins, the city attorney, has an annual base salary of $356,212 — slightly higher than the $332,796 base pay of his predecessor Brian Doyle.

Jain said he supports increasing council compensation, but the city should first establish a consistent process for evaluating executive performance. He also said the commission’s comparison of council salaries with other cities did not fully account for the value of medical benefits provided elsewhere. Santa Clara does not provide medical benefits to elected officials, and the commission intends to revisit that issue during the next salary-setting cycle in 2027.

Park said he understands why Jain raised the issue, arguing the discussion was less about council pay than the city’s lack of a consistent performance review process.

“It’s kind of our fault for not having a process in place that gave performance reviews,” he said at the meeting.

Still, he defended increasing council compensation and said elected officials often spend well beyond the estimated 30 hours a week attending council meetings, regional boards and committees, which makes it difficult for working residents to serve in office.

Contact Maryanne Casas-Perez at [email protected] or @CasasPerezRed on X.