Mayor defends pay hikes for city employees as budget review process rolls on

Mayor Danny Avula responds to questions from Councilmember Sarah Abubaker and attendees at Wednesday’s district meeting. (Jonathan Spiers photo)

After weeks of debate among City Councilmembers and administrators over potential adjustments to Richmond’s proposed budget, Mayor Danny Avula got a chance to weigh in and defend his spending plan in a friendly but sometimes feisty face-to-face with one of its most vocal critics.

Avula found himself in the hot seat Wednesday at a Fourth District meeting hosted by Sarah Abubaker. She and fellow council newcomer Kenya Gibson of the Third District have been critical of the $3 billion budget proposal and the process to review it.

Abubaker and Gibson have argued that the plan should not include across-the-board pay raises for city employees while reducing funding for nonprofits and other council priorities.

They’ve also been critical of the raises for the city’s highest paid administrators, with Abubaker calling for smaller or no raises for most nonunion employees with salaries above $150,000.

That suggestion and others have been met with pushback by city administrators and budget writers, who maintain that the raises of 3.25% or more are needed to keep the city competitive with salaries of comparable positions in state government or neighboring counties.

In an unusual display at a meeting Monday night, nearly a dozen department heads addressed council in a public hearing to speak in support of keeping the raises, taking turns at the podium alongside citizen speakers and others requesting funding for several nonprofit groups left out of the budget.

Doug Gernat, deputy director of IT for Richmond, was among the city department heads who addressed council in Monday’s hearing. (Screenshot)

At her district meeting Wednesday evening at Stony Point Fashion Park, Abubaker reiterated a question she posed Monday to administrators, this time to Avula directly, of whether Richmond is in a budget crisis.

“If you look at the exponential growth of the top range of salaries in the City of Richmond over the last five years, quite candidly it has exploded,” she said, referring to data that, since 2022, the number of city employees making over $200,000 a year has grown from four to over 40.

“I value the perspective of we need to be competitive, and these are merit-driven jobs that take some skill. That being said, my point is either we’re in a budget crisis or we’re not,” Abubaker said.

Avula, who is in his fourth month as mayor and has been making the rounds in recent weeks at other councilmembers’ district meetings, responded that he wanted to “dispel the idea that we’re in a budget crisis.”

“The reality is that we had $50 million more in revenue this year in the city,” he said. “That’s a really good indicator. It means that Richmond is growing, and we are capturing more tax revenue, we are seeing population growth.

“The thing that I heard more than anything on the campaign trail was, one, housing affordability; two, frustration with City Hall. How do you fix frustration with City Hall? It has got to be an investment in our people, in our systems, and we’ve got to build a better organization,” he said. “As the executive of the organization, my best tool to build a better organization is the ability to recruit and retain the best talent possible.”

Avula credited the city’s recent switch to the Virginia Retirement System for boosting recruitment, and he noted last year’s collective bargaining agreements that require a minimum of 3.25% across-the-board raises. For comparison, the current FY25 budget allocated a 4% raise for all city employees, and the FY24 budget included an 8% raise for most employees.

Regarding selective raises, Avula said he would not support raises for union workers and not nonunion workers, nor would he support restricting raises from higher paid positions.

“I will never support disparate raises for union versus nonunion. Whatever we’re doing for unionized employees we’re going to be doing for employees across the board,” he said. “I have the real situation of having to compete in a market. If we are treating our employees, even our senior employees, differently than the state or surrounding counties, we’re going to lose out on talent.”

Avula acknowledged that the budget includes his own pay raise, with the mayor’s salary set to increase from about $130,000 to $175,000. Councilmembers’ salaries are also set to increase, by $20,000 to $45,000 per member. Officials have said salaries for Richmond’s elected officials have remained largely unchanged for two decades and the higher mayor’s salary still falls below where it would be with cost-of-living adjustments over the past 20 years.

In attendance at Wednesday’s meeting was Councilmember Reva Trammell, whose Eighth District also makes up part of Richmond’s Southside. At Monday’s hearing on councilmembers’ proposed amendments to the budget, Trammell defended the higher salaries for the city’s top employees.

“I’m sick of hearing $200,000, $300,000. They work seven days a week,” Trammell said Monday.

Avula presenting the proposed budget to City Council in late March. (Screenshot)

Since Avula presented the budget in late March, council has held several budget workshops that stretched hours longer than originally scheduled. The additional time was requested by Abubaker, Gibson and others who maintained that the process should allow more time for council to review the budget document and suggest changes. Avula agreed when Abubaker reiterated that Wednesday.

“Part of the problem being on council,” she told the mayor, “is that we get a 605-page document and we’ve got essentially 10 days to do this analysis, and quite frankly, it’s my understanding it’s not always done.”

An additional budget workshop is scheduled Monday at 1 p.m. to resume discussions about council’s proposed amendments. Amendments are to be introduced at a meeting May 5 at 4 p.m., and a final public hearing is to be held May 12, when council is expected to vote on the budget. State law requires the city to adopt a budget before July 1, the start of the fiscal year.