Beaverton’s mayor and city councilors will vote Tuesday evening on a proposal to give themselves pay bumps and new benefits, partially rolling back a previous council’s move just four years ago to slash the full-time mayor’s salary and benefits.
The proposed change grows out of the frustration Mayor Lacey Beaty said she felt last year when she gave birth to her second child and confronted the reality of having fewer benefits than the city’s non-elected employees.
The increased salaries wouldn’t go into effect until January at the earliest because of a city mandate that prohibits elected officials from raising their salaries during their terms. The mayor and three city council seats are up for election this year. However, because Beaty and two of those councilors are running unopposed, the potential salary increases will likely benefit them in 2025.
The remaining three council seats, which will be up for election in 2026, would see higher salaries in January 2027.
If the city council approves the resolution, Beaty’s yearly salary would increase from $99,216 to $134,454 next year — an increase of roughly 35%.
That would still be significantly lower than the salary of former Mayor Dennis “Denny” Doyle, who lost to Beaty in the 2020 election. Doyle left office as Beaverton shifted to a council-manager government, meaning that a city manager oversees the city’s operations instead of the mayor. Doyle earned $187,410 in his last year in office, according to a city spokesperson. (In 2022, Doyle pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and was sentenced in 2023 to six months in prison.)
Because the mayor’s management responsibilities decreased under the voter-approved changes to the city’s governance, the city council cut the mayor’s salary in 2021 by about half. They also prohibited the mayor or councilors from opting into the state’s Public Employees Retirement System.
Councilor John Dugger, who was appointed in 2022, said the city council at the time “was reacting to their perceived overpayment of the previous mayor and so they kind of went too far the other way.”
Dugger said he expects the city council to approve the ordinance on Tuesday. “If you look at the mayors around the area that are doing exactly what we wanted our mayor to do, there is significantly higher compensation,” he said. “And so we’re trying to match that.”
By comparison, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler earned $144,000 in 2022-23. Beaverton City Manager Jenny Haruyama, who was hired in 2021 to oversee the city’s operations, has a yearly salary of $272,110, according to a city spokesperson.
Last fall, the city council asked outside consultants to examine the salary and job benefits of Beaverton’s mayor and councilors.
The consultants found that the mayor’s salary should be raised due to the high demands of the full-time job, and found that all city officials should have been eligible for the state’s Public Employees Retirement System since entering office.
“The previous council illegally removed this position from PERS,” Beaty said. “They weren’t given the right information to make the decision.”
The council will vote on Tuesday to allow the mayor and city councilors the option to join PERS, which all elected officials in Oregon who work more than 600 hours annually have access to.
Another provision would make clear that family and medical leave are appropriate reasons for the mayor to take paid time off. The mayor can take unlimited days of paid time off for any reason, which Tuesday’s vote will not affect. The new language would be similar to that of many other cities, Beaty said.
Beaty said having clearer guidelines for the mayor’s paid time off makes sense for the role, which frequently requires meetings and public engagement on weekends and vacation days.
“I’ve worked every vacation I’ve had in this job,” Beaty said. “This is just recognizing that this executive job is different — and that you’re the mayor all the time.”
Last spring, she gave birth to a daughter and said she didn’t have designated maternity leave benefits. Beaty is Beaverton’s first woman mayor.
Most members of the previous city council, Beaty said, “didn’t think about a woman doing this job or (consider) that a woman might have birth while she serves in office. It just wasn’t designed to have someone like me in it.”
City councilors will also vote to raise their monthly stipends for the first time in eight years, from $1,600 to $2,089, increasing their annual pay to just over $25,000.
If approved, the resolution would automatically raise elected officials’ pay every year by up to 4% to account for inflation and cost-of-living increases.
Dugger said the increased pay might attract more city council candidates from historically marginalized communities who can’t afford to take on a low-paying part-time job. Dugger said he typically spends 20 to 25 hours a week on his city council duties in addition to his full time job.
“If you underpay your councilors, you’re gonna get retired people, and you’re gonna get wealthy people, and there’s nothing wrong with either of those groups running, but that’s all that can afford to do this job,” he said.
Dugger, who isn’t up for election this fall, said the increased salaries are a step in the right direction, but said he hasn’t decided if he’s going to run for reelection in 2026 because of the high time commitment and low pay. “I’m not even sure if I’m gonna benefit from this.”
— Carlos Fuentes covers state politics and government. Reach him at 503-221-5386 or cfuentes@oregonian.com.
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