Part 1 – Recent Salary Increases to the City Manager
By the No on Measure Q Campaign
Introduction
On July 9, 2024 the Davis City Council approved a 2.0% increase in base salary for the City Manager, Mike Webb. This salary increase was made retroactive to January 9 of this year. He was also awarded a retroactive bonus of 3.0% for 2023 and another 3.0% bonus for 2024.
The ostensible reason given for the 2.0% raise was that Mr. Webb’s 2023 salary was 2.8% LESS than the median salary earned by City Managers in nearby cities, and thus a raise was appropriate to keep Mr. Webb’s salary competitive. However, the Council based the City Manager’s salary increase on misleading data.
Mr. Webb’s salary was compared with City Managers in twelve purportedly “comparable” local cities in the region. However, half of those 12 cities are much larger than Davis, and include Sacramento (population of 525,000), Roseville (population 190,000), and Fairfield (population 119, 000). Davis’ population is only about 67,000.
An Alternative Fair Comparison with Comparable-Sized Cities
If City Manager compensation data is used from the 6 truly “comparable”-sized cities (that is, cities with a population +/- 20% of Davis), Mr. Webb’s 2023 salary is as much as 30.7% GREATER than the City Managers in the six comparable-sized cities. (Lincoln, Lodi, Napaos, Rocklin, West Sacramento, and Woodland – see Appendix 1)
Further, the Council did not include in Mr. Webb’s comparative 2023 salary, the fact that he was retroactively awarded a 3% “performance bonus” for 2023 and for 2024 (even though the year isn’t even over). When this “performance bonus” is added to his 2023 base salary, Mr Webb’s compensation was even further in excess of all comparable-sized cities in the region. Thus, the basis of comparison in regard to Mr. Webb’s salary increase was seriously flawed.
What makes things worse, Mr. Webb was granted these “performance bonuses” despite the abysmal state of the city’s budget, with no audit of the city’s financials since 2021, a general fund reserve that is half what it should be, and the fiscal situation so desperate it required reducing funds last year for road repairs by $1.5 million and suspending paying down the $42 million debt for unfunded employee benefits.
Conclusions
The recent granting of excessive salary increases to all City of Davis employees was based, in part, on comparisons of salary/compensation of employees that included much larger cities rather than limiting the salary comparisons to comparable sized cities. As a result, Davis City employees enjoy a substantial salary advantage compared to employees of similar sized cities and the resultant recent salary increases ostensibly given to keep our employee compensation “competitive” were not necessary at all.
In coming part 2 of this series, we will explore how this same reliance on misleading data resulted in a salary increase of 6% (retroactive about 1 year) to ALL Davis City firefighters when they were already earning an average of from 1% to 9% higher than in comparable sized cities.
Appendix A
Actual Salary Comparisons of Davis Employees with Comparable-Sized Cities
Regrettably, none of the raw data used to perform the calculations displayed in the compensation study were contained in the Staff Report for this matter so these reported results could not be replicated.
However, all public employees’ salaries are reported to and can be downloaded from https://publicpay.ca.gov/. In this manner the 2023 populations and compensation information of the City Managers for each of the twelve, purportedly comparable cities above were downloaded and inserted into a spreadsheet for analysis which results are summarized below.
This data clearly shows that if the City Manager’s salary and total compensation is compared to comparable-sized cities in the region, he receives from 2.9% to 27.5% more (average 15.7% more) than they salary of the City Managers in the 6 comparable sized cities (Lincoln, Lodi, Napa, Rocklin, West Sacramento, and Woodland) and from 2.8% to 30.7% (average 13.3% more) in total compensation. And this was before his 3.0% performance bonus for 2023 retroactively awarded by the City Council.
Davisite 
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