{"id":364688,"date":"2026-08-06T21:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T21:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/364688\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T21:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T21:42:08","slug":"jacksonville-city-manager-gets-9-pay-raise-city-attorney-pay-jumps-30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/364688\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacksonville city manager gets 9% pay raise, city attorney pay jumps 30%"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">The above video is our WITN+ livestream and may not reflect the content in this story.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">JACKSONVILLE, N.C. (WITN) &#8211; Jacksonville\u2019s city manager is getting a nice pay raise thanks to a new contract approved earlier this week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">City Council agreed to a new five-year deal for Joshua Ray, who started in September of 2022.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Ray gets a 9% pay hike, bringing his annual salary to $238,000. He will also be eligible for annual \u201cmarket and merit-based increases\u201d at council\u2019s discretion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">City Attorney Lorna Welch will also be taking home a lot more, thanks to her new five-year deal. Welch\u2019s pay jumps nearly 31%, to $229,000. She too will be eligible for yearly merit and market increases.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 WITN. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The above video is our WITN+ livestream and may not reflect the content in this story. JACKSONVILLE, N.C.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[187,116,118,117,56494,25904],"class_list":["post-364688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-city","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-manager","tag-raise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364688","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=364688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}