The Oceanside City Council unanimously approved a 45% raise for itself Wednesday, its first pay hike in 10 years, bringing its compensation closer to that of similar sized cities in the region.<\/p>\n
The increase, if approved a second time in the next few weeks, will boost council members\u2019 current $23,193 base annual salary to $33,630 beginning in December. The mayor receives a little more, a base compensation of $25,295, which will increase to $36,678.<\/p>\n
The mayor and council members also receive an expense allowance and compensation for serving as directors at meetings of the city\u2019s Community Development Commission and the Harbor District. That amount will not change and can be as much as an additional $900 a month for council members and $950 a month for the mayor.<\/p>\n
The pay hike will bump Oceanside from eighth place to fourth place in the county, behind San Diego, Chula Vista and Vista, a city official said.<\/p>\n
Oceanside\u2019s elected positions, like most in San Diego County, are considered part time, even though City Council members often put in long hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust for the record, I probably work about 60 hours a week,\u201d said Mayor Esther Sanchez, who was elected to her first City Council term in 2020. \u201cI think a couple of us do.\u201d<\/p>\n
No one opposed the increase. The ordinance introduced Wednesday only covers the mayor and council. However, the council asked staffers to bring back a resolution to consider in May with raises for the city clerk and city treasurer.<\/p>\n
The city clerk and city treasurer each receive a base annual salary of $24,182. The city treasurer also receives an additional $100 per month each for meetings of the Community Development Commission and the Harbor District.<\/p>\n
Dan Dominguez, who chairs the city\u2019s volunteer Manufactured Home Fair Practices Commission and is married to first-term City Treasurer Phyllis Dominguez, asked the council to approve raises for all the city\u2019s elected officials. He said his wife did not ask him to speak on the issue.<\/p>\n
The City Council does \u201ca fantastic job,\u201d he said, and the younger members have full-time jobs and families to support.<\/p>\n
Better pay would attract more candidates and younger people who otherwise could not afford to serve, Dominguez said, a reasoning often employed in requests for higher salaries for elected officials.<\/p>\n
\u201cOceanside elected officials are doing a fantastic job,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to encourage the next generation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps the last time the council discussed a possible increase was in 2019, when first-term Councilmember Christopher Rodriquez floated the idea. A majority of the council opposed it, and no changes were made. Rodriguez did not file for re-election when his council term ended in 2022.<\/p>\n
The San Diego City Council is the only one in the county where the position is a full-time job. The salary there is $15,295 per month, according to an Oceanside staff report.<\/p>\n
In Chula Vista, the city council position pays $5,367 a month, and in Vista the salary is $3,196 monthly, compared to the current $1,933 monthly in Oceanside, the report states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Oceanside City Council unanimously approved a 45% raise for itself Wednesday, its first pay hike in 10…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[5693,46727,79557,114585,74,76,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-260044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-compensation","9":"tag-oceanside-city-council","10":"tag-pay-raise","11":"tag-salary-hike","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-san-diego-headlines","14":"tag-san-diego-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}