Kansas City mayor and city council members will consider giving themselves 15% raises

Mike Hendricks
·2 min read
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Salaries for Mayor Quinton Lucas and all 12 members of the city council taking office on Aug. 1 would increase 15% under a proposal advanced by a council committee Tuesday.

On a vote of 3-1, the council’s special committee for legal review recommended that the full council approve the raises when it meets Thursday afternoon. If passed, it would be the first salary increase for those positions since the current council took office four years ago.

Lucas’ salary would rise to $163,081 a year, up from $141,455, which would be about $100,000 a year less than City Manager Brian Platt is paid under his contract.

Pay for council members would rise from the current $70,718 a year to $81,538. Although theirs are considered part-time jobs, some council members work at it full time and have no outside employment, while others own businesses or have other full-time work beyond their elective position.

According to the proposed ordinance, those salaries would not change during the upcoming four-year term. The mayor and council members also get car allowances and have aides who help them do their work.

The raises were part of a package of salary increases that also includes municipal judges and city staffers. Council members Andrea Bough, Lee Barnes and Kevin McManus voted to advance the ordinance. Heather Hall voted no because she thought the raises for elected officials should be voted on separately.

Of the four committee members, Bough is the only one who will benefit from the increase. The other three are leaving the council because of term limits.

No one from the public commented on the proposal. Hall said she had no objection to the salary increases, which are in line with the pay scale a previous city council envisioned when it approved raises for elected officials more than a decade ago. That 2010 ordinance set council pay at $61,569 and pay for the mayor at $123,156, with automatic annual raises of 4%.

Because those yearly raises never took effect, the city council in 2019 began trying to correct that with a one-time 15% raise. With another 15% increase, the salaries proposed this week would be nearly equal to what they would have been had the automatic 4% raises remained in effect the past 13 years.