Increase is the first for Jay Baksa since July 2002
Gilroy – The city’s top administrator has received a 4 percent pay bump to bring his salary to $209,755 annually.
The “merit” raise of nearly $8,100 is the first that City Administrator Jay Baksa has received since July 2002, though his salary has not remained flat in that time. Like other city employees, he has received annual cost-of-living increases of roughly 2.5 percent. Council has held back on performance-based increases for themselves and Baksa due to uncertainty in the city budget outlook. In recent months, that financial picture has started to look better.
“We’ve had some good years and some bad years and you learn to adjust in the public sector with your expectations,” Baksa said. “But in total, I feel the council has been very fair to me and my family.”
The base salary does not reflect Baksa’s monthly car allowance and other benefits. The city’s human resources department could not provide benefit figures by press time.
City Councilman Craig Gartman declined to comment on the raise, since compensation is a personnel matter that council decides in closed session. He said, however, that it “was the most discussed review that I have seen in my five years on council.” Compensation discussions normally take one or two meetings; in Baksa’s case, council required three or four meetings, according to Gartman.
He pointed out that Baksa earned about $10,000 a month in 2000, but now earns more than $15,000 a month.
“We discussed many things over a number of meetings,” Gartman said. “This was the compensation that the majority of council decided to go with.”
Baksa was hired to serve as city administrator in 1983 after Sewergate, when a group of top city administrators were fired for covering up sewage dumping in the Pajaro River. Baksa couldn’t remember his exact starting salary, but he guessed it was in the $40,000 range.
The figures, then and now, pale in comparison to industry leaders in the private sector.
“You don’t get into it for the money,” Baksa said. “The benefits are good. And then there are the side benefits – seeing things get built, having individual people come to you and being able to help them. Some of that’s priceless. You ‘re doing things that will stand the test time.”
His counterpart to the north, Morgan Hill City Manager Ed Tewes, has worked for the city six years and earns about $195,000 annually. The figure includes a car and house allowance, among other benefits.
“The compensation for top public managers is a function of the marketplace, the complexity of the assignment, and the quality of their work,” he said. “I’m sure that Jay’s raise is a reflection of all of those.”
Council members signed off Baksa’s salary increase at a Dec. 18 meeting.
