Austin city manager to be highest paid among 10 largest cities with similar form of government

Austin is getting ready to pay its incoming chief executive tens of thousands of dollars more than his predecessor.

T.C. Broadnax, the exiting city manager of Dallas who is slated to start in Austin on May 6, will get a base salary of $470,017 — a nearly $50,000 increase from his pay in Dallas and up about $82,000 compared with Austin's former permanent City Manager Spencer Cronk's base salary at the time of his firing in early 2023.

Broadnax's pay will not only be the highest Austin has offered to its chief administrator in recent years, but it's the highest base salary of any city manager currently leading the 10 largest U.S. cities that use a "council-manager" form of government, according to an American-Statesman analysis of salary data.

Second to Broadnax's top salary is the city manager of Charlotte, N.C., who makes $451,932 annually, according to the city's open data portal.

By comparison, the city manager of Phoenix — the most populous U.S. city (1.64 million residents) with a council-manager form of government — currently has a $415,542 base salary, according to a city spokesperson.

Broadnax will be earning nearly two times more per city resident in Austin than Phoenix's city manager earns per resident there, and just under 1.5 times more than he earned in Dallas, a city with nearly 1.3 million residents, according to the U.S. Census' latest figures.

In a council-manager form of government, the city manager, a nonelected official, is in charge of daily operations, and the city council, led by the mayor, sets policies.

In Austin, the city manager oversees more than 40 departments and 16,000 employees, and makes high-level personnel decisions.

Cities like New York and Houston use a "strong-mayor" form of government in which the mayor oversees daily operations.

While population is a key measure, other factors such as a city's total budget size, spending per resident and more could be considered when making salary comparisons for city managers, said Miha Vindis, a Texas State University political science professor who studies leadership and management practices in both the public and private sectors.

Vindis compared being a large city's manager to being the CEO of a large company — the chief executive of a company with a $5.5 billion annual revenue would make far more than the $470,000 Broadnax is slated to make in Austin.

A CEO, however, is not paid on the taxpayers' dime.

"It's really difficult in that sense to gauge what is the correct salary," Vindis told the Statesman. "My intuition is that for a large city like Austin, somewhere in the range of four to five hundred thousand (dollars) is probably not as crazy as it might seem."

How did Austin land on a $470K base salary?

Mosaic Public Partners, the executive search firm that the Austin City Council hired to find its next city manager, was authorized by the council to "negotiate the hiring package," according to a statement provided by city spokesperson David Ochsner.

The City Council earlier this month unanimously approved hiring Broadnax as well as his employment agreement, which outlines the $470,000 base salary and other fringe benefits.

On top of his base salary, Broadnax will receive thousands more in additional compensation, including a $1,620.32 annual cellphone allowance, a $5,000 per month housing allowance for the first six months of his contract and a $7,000 annual executive allowance, according to his employment agreement.

Allowances on top of base salaries have become the industry standard for city manager positions across the country, Vindis said.

While Broadnax's salary and compensation package were likely negotiated during the hiring process, a similar salary range seemed to be floated to potential candidates months before Broadnax was hired — signaling that at least some city leaders were prepared to pay significantly more for Austin's next city manager, compared with previous chief administrators, well before narrowing down the applicant pool.

In a leaked video, the city manager of Bozeman, Mont., who said he had been contacted by the search firm regarding the top job in Austin — said the pay for the position was around $475,000.

Though he did not end up applying for the job, the base salary Jeff Mihelich described, well before the application deadline, was near what the City Council ultimately approved for Broadnax.

City manager salary caps

Cities with council-manager forms of government have taken different approaches to how they limit a city manager's pay.

Some have salary cap increases outlined in their city charters, others have limits within their employment contracts that stipulate a maximum amount or percentage increases, and others have no limits at all.

Austin's city charter does not specify a cap or limitation on how much a city manager's salary can be increased, according to Ochsner's statement.

Broadnax's employment agreement stipulates that his annual raise will match the general base salary percentage increase that city employees who are not covered by a labor agreement receive. That increase is approved by the City Council when it sets the annual budget.

This fiscal year, that pay raise was 4%, according to Ochsner's statement.

"The City Council may consider adjustments to the City Manager’s compensation in conjunction with its performance review," which will be in October, according to Broadnax's employment agreement.

In San Antonio, there have been years of debates over how much a city manager should earn and how, or if, that amount should be limited.

The issue eventually landed on the ballot in 2018 and San Antonio voters opted to cap the city manager's salary at 10 times what the lowest paid full-time employee makes and add an eight-year limit on the position, the San Antonio Express News reported. The San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association drove the ballot petition to cap the city manager salary. At the time, Sheryl Sculley, who had been city manager for over a decade and was making $475,000, was negotiating with union leaders for a new contract. Sculley resigned soon after the petition passed.

Lifting these same restrictions could be a question San Antonio voters are soon asked.

City documents from a March 2024 San Antonio charter review commission meeting state that with the current limitations on city manager tenure and salary, San Antonio cannot be competitive in that field.

Currently, San Antonio's city manager earns a $374,400 base salary, a city spokesperson confirmed to the Statesman.

Other cities have caps on city manager salaries but are less stringent than San Antonio.

The former city manager of El Paso, for example, would have maxed out at a $450,000 annual base salary, which was stipulated in his employment contract, according to a city spokesperson. When he left El Paso, Tommy Gonzalez was earning $441,807. El Paso's interim city manager does not have a salary cap.

In Phoenix, any increase the city manager gets is tied to the pay raise percentage the City Council approves for employee bargaining unions, employment records obtained by The Arizona Republic through a public information request show.

Other cities like Fort Worth and Oklahoma City do not have caps on city manager salaries, representatives from both cities told the Statesman. The city manager of Fort Worth has a base salary of $410,071 and Oklahoma City's city manager has a base salary of $305,453 a year.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax to be top paid in new position