Lynn mayor says salary should be similar to other communities

LYNN – Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy spoke at length for the first time publicly Tuesday about how her $82,500 annual salary compares to earnings for other city and town mayors and managers.?My salary is 446th in the city. There are jobs not even requiring a high school education that pay higher than mine,” Kennedy told City Council President Daniel Cahill and fellow councilors.Cahill said he has already started his own research into mayor salary comparisons and he asked city Comptroller Stephen Spencer to research top municipal executive pay rates, including salaries paid to town managers in Saugus and Swampscott and the mayors of Revere, New Bedford, Quincy, Brockton and Fall River, and report back to the council.Tuesday?s discussion occurred two months after a Superior Court justice designated $82,500 as the annual salary benchmark for Lynn?s mayor.Councilors previously polled by the Item indicated they favor a pay hike for the mayor, but an April 15 public hearing scheduled to discuss the mayoral compensation did not take place. Instead, councilors scaled down their own annual pay to match a number equivalent to 15 percent of Kennedy?s salary.The cut reduced each of the 11 councilors? annual pay by almost $3,000 to $12,375. Each councilor is also no longer receiving a $725 a month stipend that Kennedy also waived.All told, the reductions amount to an annual $128,000 taxpayer savings, based on city treasurer?s office calculations.The City Charter gives councilors the authority to set the mayor?s pay – an arrangement that Cahill on Tuesday called “awkward.” But Councilor at large Gordon “Buzzy” Barton called Kennedy?s pay “almost embarrassing” and added: “I don?t like what our mayor is paid.”Kennedy told councilors Revere Mayor Daniel Rizzo earns $133,000 and said the Saugus town manager and the Swampscott town administrator earn about the same amount.She said most municipal chief executives are among the top 10 percent or 15 percent highest-paid city workers in their communities.?Four hundred and forty-sixth, by anybody?s standards, is a little low for a chief executive,” she said.She pointed out that the current mayoral salary was set by councilors in 1998.?I?ve waited for two months to let the council digest the court case and to bring the salary of mayor so it comports more with other cities and towns,” she added.