City Council

City of Salem, Massachusetts “Know Your Rights Under the Open Meeting Law, M.G.L. c. 30A ss. 18-25 and City Ordinance Sections 2-2028 through 2-2033.” The City Council Committee on Ordinances, Licenses and Legal Affairs co-posted with the Committee of the Whole _________________________________________________________________________________________________ met in the Council Chamber on _March 26, 2026__________ at ______6:00______P.M. for the purpose of discussing the matters(s) listed below. Notice of this meeting was posted on ___ March 19, 2026__ at ___ 6:52 P.M._________________ (This meeting is being recorded) ATTENDANCE OLLA – Varela (chair), Hapworth, Prosniewski, Smith, and Holappa. COW – King, Flynn, Sydoriak, Davis, Merkl, Turowski. From the city – Lia Cammarata, HR Director, Bill McHugh, Harbormaster and Tara Mansfield, Library Director. ABSENT WERE: None. Ordinance Amendment relative to Living Wage. Varela – This was brought to us by Davis to start a discussion about a living wage in Salem. Davis – The intent of this is very clear. We have a cost-of-living crisis with housing, food, gas, etc. We want to make sure that those that work for the city are getting a dignified wage. We collaborated with the North Shore Labor Council to make this as responsible as possible given our budget concerns. This will be a modest wage increase and won’t go into effect until Fiscal Year 2028. This will give the affected employees $1.00/hour raise annually until we get to a maximum of $18.75. This will ease the city into the increases just like the state did when they raised the minimum wage to $15/hour. Varela – First we will hear from the department heads so they can tell us how this will affect their department and budgets. McHugh – Mostly we use part time seasonal help. We get those certified from other agencies. We do hire some high school students, college students and retirees and if I had to pay them a lot more, then I might reconsider hiring more staff. Davis – Some of your parttime staff makes $15.50/hour. When it comes to your concern about the increase, would the incremental raises of $1 annually lessen your concern? And are all your parttime staff either students or retirees? McHugh – I would have to look at the person that I am considering hiring. At a higher wage, I may not take a chance on hiring a student. If the wages increase for the uncertified employees, then I may not be able to hire them because they need more supervision so I may just hire someone that is more seasoned at a higher wage. Varela – I appreciate that you are hiring youth and offer a program for them to be a pathway to get the required certification. Smith – You need to hire seasonal staff, so what will you do if there is a wage increase and you aren’t hiring the students and retirees at the higher wage? McHugh – I wouldn’t take a chance on someone that needs more supervision and I would have to hire someone at a higher wage that has experience. Cammarata – I think this is a good thing to talk about. Kudos to Salem when the state increased the minimum wage years ago, municipalities didn’t have to opt in, but Salem did at the time so there is a commitment to pay employees a decent wage. There is a budget concern, if you pay employees more than we won’t be able to hire as many employees. If the seasonal and parttime employees are getting more than those wages may get to what our FTEs are getting paid. I don’t want to diminish the parttime/seasonal employees because we need them to have certain programs, like at the library and golf course. Davis – Can you explain about the FTEs and how that impacts things? If we are increasing the wage, wouldn’t it just mean that each department that was affected would have to increase their budget? Cammarata – Yes, they would need an exponentially higher budget each year. Davis – Do you know how many full-time employees that are around $18.75 or would be around $18.75 in the next few years? Cammarata – I don’t have that number. Hiring a new employee at a wage that is at or near what others that have been here for years are getting will affect morale, so we need to be careful of how this is done. Mansfield – We have 8 parttime employees. Seven of them are high school students. They each work no more than 8 hours a week so it is a total of 38.5 hours weekly. They start at $15/hour and get annual non-union raises. Sydoriak – If we sent a list of questions for HR to answer, would that be helpful so you aren’t caught off guard and could take some time to complete them like how many employees would this impact, etc.? Cammarata – Yes, that would be helpful. Varela – This is just the start of this conversation. We will need to hear from the mayor as well about this so this will be an ongoing conversation. Merkl – I don’t think the council should use an ordinance to increase wages because we don’t know from one year to the next how this will affect the budget for each department. I appreciate that we want everyone to get a living wage, I’m not sure this is how we should attempt to get there. Prosniewski – I think the bottom line is that the taxpayers want to know how much this will cost them. If we could get that information from each department that would be affected, and not just the parttimers that are getting an increased wage but the other employees that will get increases as well. Varela – This becomes difficult to talk about because if we are raising the parttime minimum wages from $15 to $19/hour, then we are going to have to give raises to other employees to keep the other employees. King – I would like to see more data on how this will impact the city now and into the future. I am the liaison to the Council on Aging, and we have discussed the wages of the parttime employees. Their employees aren’t teenagers. Most of them are adults, like the drivers for the shuttle. Some of those staff have been poached by other cities because they pay better. I don’t know that this is something that we must resolve through this ordinance, but it is something to consider. We not only have to think about a living wage, but also a competitive wage so we don’t lose talented people to other municipalities or private businesses. Varela – In HR, you are already looking at wages for our employees and similar with other cities to be sure we are staying competitive. Holappa – One thing that we need to consider is if we raise the wages for Salem city employee, then it could eventually lead to increased wages for that job type in other cities. So, someone that lives in Salem but works at a golf course in another town could get a raise because we increased the wage here. It is difficult to figure out those types of benefits but if there is anyone in HR or elsewhere that can figure out those benefits, that would be helpful. Davis – It would be helpful to know how many staff that are in the $19-$25/hour range because they might be affected by this increase too. And if there is a way to find out the type of employees that we are talking about from department to department, because they aren’t all high schoolers like are working at the library, etc. Cammarata – We need to be very careful about separating out employees by age. King – Correct me if I am wrong, but anytime we talk about age and lifestyle in relation to employment and wage, it becomes a legal nightmare. Cammarata – Yes, I think if we talk about the person’s role and wage that is fine, but we need to keep age out of the discussion. Flynn – I would like to see how this is going to affect the budget and the taxpayers. I agree with Merkl that as a council, we can’t add to the budget. I think this is a good discussion, but we must be careful how we move forward. Smith – I have several problems with this. First, I have a problem with calling this a living wage. How can a family of 4 live off $19.50/hour? I think a living wage is more like $30/hour. If we start increasing wages, my concern is that departments are going to have to cut programs and lay off staff because they just can’t afford the increase. I would like to get more up to date data because some of what we have is from 2023. Some of these people are deceased or don’t work for the city anymore. I would like more people in the union. I know that they won’t want to be in the union if they are only seasonal but getting more people in the union would be a benefit to the employees. I would like to hear from the mayor and more department heads. I don’t think we have the authority to increase these wages. Public Comment – I don’t think $18.75 is a living wage but it would be an improvement. I make $39,000 annually and I wouldn’t be able to live in Salem if my wife didn’t work too. The highest paid city employee makes about $255,000 annually and the average salary in Essex County is about $103,000. I have been a seasonal employee, and seasonal employees are needed just as much as year-round and full-time employees. I am a union representative and my apprentices right out of high school make $25.15/hour so the current wage is crazy low. Increasing wages will get better talent in the city and increase goodwill. If you think you can replace a doorman with an automatic door, you will find out all of things that the doorman was doing that you don’t even think about because they aren’t just opening a door. The buying power in Boston is 20% so if you aren’t raising the employees’ salaries by 4%, then you are making your employees poorer. As a taxpayer in Salem, I can’t think of a better way to spend money than increasing the wage of those that work hard to make this city great. I am a realtor and I sit on a city board. I have some data that I would like to share regarding the cost of owning a home in Salem. To buy a house in Salem, you will need to make $174,412 annually and to buy a condo, you will need to make $130,080 annually. Not only should the wages increase for the parttime & seasonal employees, but all employees should also make more money. Back to discussion Smith – Motion to keep in committee and seconded by Holappa. Motion carries 5-0. on the motion of C. Smith, the meeting adjourned at 6:49P.M. Andrew Varela MBC (Chairperson)