Mayor Jeff Elmore is pushing back against a published report that claimed he gave himself a big pay raise without city council approval, saying the story got the key details wrong.<\/p>\n
Elmore did receive a raise, but he said it came at the request of the Jacksonville City Council because they believed his pay was not competitive for a city Jacksonville\u2019s size.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did not ask for it,\u201d Elmore said. \u201cThey called an executive session and went into to discuss my salary because I am actually the mayor’s position here in Jacksonville has been significantly lower than any of the city our size or cities around us that are comparable.\u201d<\/p>\n
A report published in a Jacksonville newspaper claimed Elmore awarded himself a nearly $23,000 salary increase, bringing his pay to more than $129,000 a year. Elmore disputed that figure, saying the adjustment was $15,000 and brought his annual salary to just over $115,000. He said the change \u201cwas unanimously agreed upon by the city council.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to a City of Jacksonville press release, the pay issue came up during a November meeting of the city council. The city said that at the time, all city employees received a 3% cost-of-living increase for 2026, while city council members received a 14% raise.<\/p>\n
Data from the Arkansas Municipal League showed Elmore\u2019s adjusted salary moved him closer to what other mayors in similar-sized cities make. In Paragould, which has a nearly identical population to Jacksonville at around 29,000, Mayor Josh Aggie has an annual salary of $140,000. In Cabot, which has about 3,000 fewer people than Jacksonville, Mayor Michael Kincaid makes $130,000 a year.<\/p>\n
Elmore acknowledged the process should have been handled differently.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did not do it as a separate ordinance,\u201d Elmore said. \u201cThey included it in the salary package of our general of our budget that is going to be corrected at our next city council meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elmore said the salary adjustments will be addressed and fixed at the Feb. 19 Jacksonville City Council meeting.<\/p>\n
Under state and local rules, mayors do not have the authority to set or approve their own salaries. Compensation for elected officials must be approved by the city council through an ordinance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Jeff Elmore is pushing back against a published report that claimed he gave himself a big pay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":{"0":"post-152601","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-jacksonville","9":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","10":"tag-jacksonville-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}