San Antonio – Just five-and-a-half years after voters put caps on the San Antonio city manager’s salary and tenure, the mayor’s Charter Review Commission thinks it’s time for a complete turnabout.
With the fire union leading the charge, 59% of San Antonio voters in November 2018 agreed to restrict the salary of the top city administrator to no more than 10 times that of the lowest-paid city employee. The charter amendment also limited a city manager from serving more than eight years.
Under those restrictions, City Manager Erik Walsh’s base salary is capped at $374,400, and he will need to leave the city’s top non-elected job by March 2027. Walsh gets an additional $16,200 from various incentives and allowances, but is not eligible for bonus pay.
Among other issues, Mayor Ron Nirenberg tasked the Charter Review Commission he assembled last fall with recommending whether to roll those changes back. In a presentation to the larger commission Thursday, a subcommittee recommended exactly that.
“So what did the preliminary findings say?” said Pat Frost, the subcommittee’s chairman and the former president of Frost Bank. “And that is, it really kind of sums up that our city manager is not competitively paid.”
North San Antonio Chamber of Commerce President Brett Finley agreed during an earlier public comment portion of the meeting that “offering competitive compensation is crucial to attracting top tier talent capable of steering our city through its intricate government landscape.”
However, others, like activist Ananda Tomas, believe voters’ 2018 decision should stand.
“Does the mayor not trust us to make the right decisions for our city? Seems so. We should reject this,” she said.
The subcommittee’s recommendation is preliminary. The commission’s final recommendations on this and other possible changes aren’t due until mid-June, and the city council would still have to act to put the issues onto a ballot - likely for the Nov. 5 election.
Even then, San Antonio voters would have the final say.
PAY COMPARISONS
The subcommittee looked at city manager salaries in 15 cities, in and outside of Texas, as well as the pay of top executives at nine local organizations.
Frost said the subcommittee did not find another city in the county that has a term limit for its city manager.
According charts included in Thursday’s presentation, Walsh’s base salary lags behind his counterparts in places like Dallas ($423,247), Fort Worth ($398,127), Arlington ($378,668), Phoenix ($415,542), and Charlotte ($451,933). But he was ahead of city managers in Austin ($350,000), Corpus Christi ($372,000), and Oklahoma City ($285,896).
Although Walsh’s base salary was also higher than that of the city manager of El Paso, the subcommittee’s presentation indicated that was based on the pay for an interim city manager. The previous city manger for the border city of 677,000 people was $441,807.
Locally, Walsh’s base pay is more than Bexar County Manger David Smith’s $284,124 and Brooks City Base CEO Leo Gomez’s $367,500.
But the heads of the other seven organizations - including CPS Energy, San Antonio Water System (SAWS), University Health System, VIA Metropolitan Transit, and the Alamo Colleges District - all rake in between $380,625 and $826,000 before bonuses or incentives.
Frost also pointed to a previous consulting report that recommended a 2019 salary range of $381,022 to $609,604. Adjusted for nothing but inflation, that range would be $462,561 to $740,059 today.
A DIFFERENT TIME, A DIFFERENT TARGET
The 2018 vote was widely seen as a referendum on the city manager at the time, Sheryl Sculley. With a base salary of $475,000, Sculley was a polarizing figure, best known for her clashes with the police and fire unions.
Despite her central role, the charter amendment didn’t apply to Sculley, who left the city after 13 years in the position a few months later.
“We think what has changed is having a new city manager that is conducting things differently - some may say better, some may say worse. But we really, again, did not go into performance,” Frost said.
VIA Metropolitan Transit Director of Communications Josh Baugh, another commission member, said he appreciated the point Frost made about looking at the position itself and not the person who filled it.
“But again it is also critical for us to acknowledge the fact that, at some point in this city’s future, we are going to have a time and point where we’re not going to have the luxury of inheriting somebody like Erik Walsh,” Baugh said.
Walsh has spent nearly 30 years at the city in various roles and was the deputy city manager when Sculley left the city. The restrictions to the city manager job were already in place when he applied for it.
The San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association had been the group leading the charter change campaign in 2018 while they were locked in a bitter, extended battle over their contract with the city. One of the three charter amendments the SAPFFA was championing allowed the union to unilaterally call for binding arbitration during contract talks.
The fire union’s president at the time, Chris Steele, was known for his willingness to fight City Hall, but he has since retired from the department.
His successor, Joe Jones, has led the union since 2022. Jones said the union is aware of the charter changes being considered, but it would up to its members whether it weighs in on the issue.
The SAPFFA is currently uncommitted on the issue of the city manager’s pay and tenure, he said, and is more focused on its early negotiations for a new contract.