By John Schwing
WESTPORT — Is $150,000 a fair salary to pay Westport’s chief elected official?
That person — the town’s first selectman — is charged with overseeing the health and safety for 28,000 people whose median household income is roughly $188,000, while managing several hundred employees and administering a $77 million share of nearly $219 million in overall municipal expenditures annually.
The Board of Finance answered that question Wednesday night with a unanimous “yes,”quickly backing a proposal to hike the first selectman’s current salary of $104,925 to $150,000. If final approval is granted by the Representative Town Meeting, it would be the first significant raise for the job in nearly two decades.
The raise would take effect with the term of the new first selectman elected in November, if the RTM gives its OK later this month.
Board members meeting in Town Hall approved the recommendation with no discussion, noting that the issue had been discussed at an earlier executive session, as well as the panel’s public online meeting in April.
During the board’s April meeting, board member Sheri Gordon said that if compensation for the first selectman had kept pace with routine raises given the town’s other top managers over the last 18 years the salary would now be roughly $152,000.
The first selectman’s post was last granted a minor raise in 2019, with a boost to the current level just shy of $105,000 — the first in 16 years.
The salary for the town’s top job is now significantly lower than compensation for full-time chief elected officials in nearly every other community in southwestern Connecticut.
The mayors in the larger cities of Stamford and Norwalk are paid approximately $182,000 and $160,000, respectively.
In neighboring suburban towns, salaries for full-time first selectmen are also higher than Westport’s. Approximate compensation for those leaders is: Fairfield, $145,000; Greenwich, $150,000; Ridgefield, $139,000; New Canaan, $147,000; Darien, rising to $142,500 in November; Wilton, $139,000, and Redding, $121,000.
No question the first selectman’s salary should go up. What I do question is why the schools superintendents salary is so high, twice as much new selectman’s proposed salary. or three times as much as the present first selectman salary. The person responsible for the whole town (schools included) is only worth 1/3 of the school superintendents salary? Not complaining just asking.