Starting next year, elected officials in Saratoga Springs will receive a pay raise — and potentially a new city charter.
Democratic Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi first floated the idea of raising the salaries for the five-member city council in December.
As it stands, the four technically part-time commissioners and mayor earn $14,500 a year. According to Sanghvi, that comes out to about $8.50 an hour.
During Tuesday’s council meeting, a proposal to increase the pay for councilors and the mayor under the city charter to $27,456 was approved. The measure also adds an additional $15,000 stipend to the mayor’s position, raising the salary to $42,456 a year.
Sangvhi said it’s long overdue.
“As I have explained earlier salaries of city councilors have not increased in over 20 years. And none of this will impact anyone sitting here. All of these positions go up for election in 2025 in November. This could be a whole new city council in 2026. So, the public gets to decide who sits here and this only comes into effect January 1st, 2026 for those who are elected by the public in November,” said Sanghvi.
The councilors generally agree that their roles as department heads are becoming more demanding.
According to a report by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, homelessness rose more than 138% in Saratoga Springs from January 2022 to January 2024. Interim Democratic Public Works Commissioner Hank Kuczynski said it’s a good idea to provide higher pay for the mayor in light of related concerns.
“It looks like the federal government is not going to be putting that much money into homelessness if what I read in the newspapers is correct. So, the mayor is going to have to spend a lot of time down in the Assembly and Senate in hearings and lobbying and I think he ought to have dinner before he drives back to Saratoga Springs. So, from my personal experience and I know what the workload is going to be for the mayor I am in favor of this resolution,” said Kuczynski.
Republican Mayor John Safford and Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll, who won his seat with GOP backing, voted against the measure.
Coll said it’s a “slippery slope” to give the mayor an increase in pay without re-organizing the city’s unusual commission form of government.
“My position is clear, I’m for, and we discussed this many times, I’m for adjusting the $14,500. To me, that’s very simple. I’m against the stipend unless we change the form of government. I’d be willing to give, if we went to mayor strong, another $100,000 to that,” said Coll.
Sanghvi had previously said the pay increase could turn into a full-blown review of the city’s charter — something Mayor Safford initially said would be too difficult to achieve in 2025. At his state of the city address in January, however, Safford announced he would be establishing a new charter review commission.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Safford laid out some possible priorities for the commission.
“Commissioner Sanghvi has pointed out some very serious flaws in our current system. Succession, for example. You’ve pointed out the flaws in our purchasing departments. So, there’s a number of things I would want the commission to look at initially and then in the process if they feel that we should make a bigger change. I can’t tell them,”said Safford.
Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran, a Democrat, agrees that the pay increases need to coincide with a charter revision.
“From 1915 until now we have paid everybody the same. That being said, the world in 2025 is not the same as in 1915. And I think that we need to adapt our style of governance, our methodologies, our processes, and our structure to better serve the city in 2025 and that only happens with comprehensive charter reform,” said Moran.
The measure passed 3-to-2.