Who tops the list of highest-paid San Jose employees? 34 over $400,000!!

This is what you need to know.  Maybe it explains the extremely high housing and cost of living in San Jose.

“As San Jose braces for unprecedented financial deficits caused by the pandemic, the city broke its record in employee compensation, with 34 officials netting more than $400,000 in pay and benefits last year.

Seven of the 10 top-paid city employees worked at the San Jose Police Department, many of whom earned more in overtime than their salary. City Manager Dave Sykes and two fire battalion chiefs also made the list.

That is more than the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court makes ($255,000 a year).  That is more than any Governor, Senator, and member of Congress makes.  It is as much as the President of the United States. Think about it.  Say something.

 

 

Who tops the list of highest-paid San Jose employees?

by Tran Nguyen, San Jose Spotlight,  6/7/21 

As San Jose braces for unprecedented financial deficits caused by the pandemic, the city broke its record in employee compensation, with 34 officials netting more than $400,000 in pay and benefits last year.

Seven of the 10 top-paid city employees worked at the San Jose Police Department, many of whom earned more in overtime than their salary. City Manager Dave Sykes and two fire battalion chiefs also made the list.

Eight city employees earned more than $400,000 in pay and benefits a year in 2018, city data shows. That number increased to 12 in 2019. In 2020, the number of employees netting more than $400,000 a year increased almost threefold, at 34, according to a San José Spotlight analysis. City data shows that a police captain topped the list last year with roughly $542,000 in compensation and benefits.

Overtime wages also jumped by $8.2 million since 2019 and currently sit at $78 million, data shows. Sixty one percent of those wages went to police officers last year, according to the analysis.

SJPD has seen a 300% increase in overtime in the past decade, according to a recent audit, making up roughly 10% of the department’s budget in 2019. Staffing levels plummeted between 2010 and 2017 and are slowly recovering.

The city employed about 8,100 workers in 22 departments last year. It currently faces a $48.1 million revenue shortfall brought on by the tax revenue decline during the pandemic.