The Boston City Council is kicking off the new year with an $11,500 raise, a bump that will increase each council member’s salary from $103,500 to $115,000.
The raises were approved by the City Council in November of last year, but only became effective on Jan. 1, per state ethics laws, which dictate that all pay hikes have to go into effect after the next election for a given position.
While that caveat excluded the five councilors who have since left the body, three by choice and two who failed to win re-election, it also granted a more than 11% raise to the five newly elected council members, four of whom have yet to do much beyond being sworn in and selecting the body’s new president on Monday.
The 13 councilors’ pay, per last fall’s vote, will continue to rise in 2025 and 2026, when their salaries increase to $120,000 and $125,000 in those respective years.
The City Council opted to vote for a tiered increase structure after the body’s initial vote to hike its pay to $125,000 starting in 2024 was vetoed by Mayor Michelle Wu.
Ruthzee Louijeune, who was selected as the council’s next president on Monday, had put forward the $125,000 salary for 2024, in her previous iteration as government operations committee chair.
At the time, Louijeune had presented the raise as a compromise with other councilors who had lobbied for an even higher pay hike, saying that the new amount of $125,000 would put the body in line with other similar cities.
Wu in her veto had cited similar concerns as other councilors, however, who had expressed discomfort with about a 21% pay hike when many lower-income city employees don’t get that type of jump, the Herald previously reported.
Still, the $125,000 salary for 2024 was unanimously passed by the council, and when it was vetoed, Louijeune amended a new proposal to include the tiered increases to achieve that same salary in 2026, as part of a veto override.
The override passed the Council by a 9-4 vote in November 2022, with Councilors Frank Baker, Michael Flaherty, Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy opposed. Flaherty and Baker have since left the council, after opting against a re-election bid.
Flynn and Murphy are among the 13 councilors who will benefit from this year’s higher salary. The others are Liz Breadon, Gabriela Coletta, Sharon Durkan, Tania Fernandes Anderson, John FitzGerald, Julia Mejia, Enrique Pepén, Henry Santana, Benjamin Weber and Brian Worrell.
Durkan was elected to her seat in a July special election, and FitzGerald, Pepén, Santana and Weber were sworn into their first terms on Monday. Therefore, none of those councilors participated in the vote that gave them a higher rate of pay.
In August 2022, Wu had proposed raising the council’s salary from $103,500 to $115,000 in 2024, with no further tiered increases, and the mayor’s salary from $207,000 to $230,000. The mayor is typically paid twice as much as councilors.
Ultimately, the council voted to bump the mayor’s pay to $250,000 in 2026. Wu is up for re-election in 2025.
The two offices don’t get yearly pay increases, but rather see salary bumps every few years. The last raise, which was only $4,000 for councilors, was approved in 2018 after a $12,000 hike four years earlier.
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