The Minneapolis City Council on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a nearly $46,000 pay raise for the city’s mayor next year — and a smaller raise for themselves two years from now.
The measure now awaits the signature of Mayor Jacob Frey.
The raises were pitched by the city clerk’s office after a 2023 survey found the Minneapolis mayor’s salary of nearly $141,000 lagged behind peers in comparable cities, including smaller St. Paul, while the salaries of Minneapolis council members were generally above their peers.
Council members are paid nearly $110,000 annually, which was nearly $29,000 more than the average among their peers in nine comparable cities, according to the 2023 study by professional services firm Guidehouse.
Under the plan approved Tuesday by an 11-1 vote, council members’ salaries would go up in 2028 — during the last two years of their four-year terms. Those raises would be based on the average cost-of-living adjustment paid to the city’s collective bargaining units.
The awkwardness of council members voting on their own compensation — and the mayor signing off on his — is not lost on the elected officials. The current process was created by the city council under guidelines of state law.
Frey wants to change the process so that the Minneapolis Charter Commission assumes responsibility for deciding. In a letter to the commission, Frey wrote, “No elected official looks forward to making a decision on their own salary, and I am no different.”
The pay raise plan is related to the 2026 city budget approved by the council Tuesday evening, but it’s a separate resolution.
