Portland Courant

The City of Portland’s Salary Commission has been immersed in studying compensation best practices and agreeing on guiding principles and criteria to determine pay rates for Portland’s new elected officials who begin their terms 2025: the mayor, the auditor and 12 councilors, with three councilors representing four new voting districts. The decision by the Independent District Commission on the new district boundaries will be announced at the end of summer.  

At its meeting on May 30, the Salary Commission finalized its guiding principles and criteria for setting salaries.  

Guiding principles for setting salaries: 

1. Pay will open opportunities for historically marginalized communities and will not be a deterrent to running and holding office. 
2. Pay should be based on examining a range of data, be fiscally responsible, and consider the city's budget, the public, and the elected officials. 
3. Pay should reflect the City of Portland's values around anti-racism, equity, transparency, communication, collaboration, and fiscal responsibility

Criteria for setting salaries

While the commission will consider market pay data, they have decided not to overemphasize maket data and embrace pay concepts that that will ensure salaries do not restrict who can run for office, including:

• the current wages of elected officials with 2023/2024 cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) added, 
• market averages for similar positions from cities with comparable populations or that neighbor Portland,  
• and a thriving wage for a single parent household with at least one child, 

Additionally, it is clear that the intention of the charter amendments is that that all the positions the Salary Commission is considering are full-time, and, therefore, the commission will not take any part-time salaries into account in the data reviewed for our decision-making process.

Watch the May meetings or access meeting presentation materials  

• Meeting 4, May 9  
• Meeting 5, May 24  (Presentation by Bureau of Human Resources) 
• Meeting 6, May 30  

Looking ahead 

At its meeting on June 13, the commission expects to arrive at a decision on the contents of a final salary proposal.  The draft report will be released for public feedback within a few days after the decision date, in mid-June. 

At its meeting on June 27, the commission will hold a public listening session on the draft salary proposal. The meeting will be hybrid and will include breakout sessions to hear from you about the salaries and methodology they are considering.  

 Visit this page to follow the work of the Salary Commission.

Original source can be found here