Nearly two years after Ontario residents approved Measure Q, raising sales tax in the city by one cent per dollar, and the same night that the Ontario City Council approved placing special assessments on 343 properties within the city limits, the mayor and three of the council’s four members voted Tuesday to give themselves a pay raise.
Already the highest remunerated city council in San Bernardino County, the quintet’s action taken October 22 was the second boost in pay the five have received in 18 months.
Prior to April 2023, four of the council members were receiving $1,884.50 per month and Mayor Paul Leon was provided with $4,761.08 per month. At that time, the council together bestowed upon themselves an increase to $2,405.13 monthly, equivalent to $28,861.56 per year. Since Leon is considered to be a council member as well, he received that increase along with the others, in addition to the stipend he is provided for serving as mayor. That moved him up to a yearly salary of $67,680.96, all told.
Recently, it was realized that under California’s Senate Bill 329, which went into effect just before the close of fiscal year 2022-23, council members in cities with populations exceeding 150,000 but less than a quarter of a million are eligible for an annual salary of $30,600 or $2,550 per month.
The council thus took it a little further this time around, granting themselves an annual pay increase of $1,738.44 or a monthly increase of $144.87, zooming them from $28,61.56 annually to the legal limit of $30,600 and from $2,405.13 to $2,550 each month. Leon, with other adjustments, will now make $75,666.96 annually or $6,305.58 monthly.
Ontario is the wealthiest municipality in San Bernardino County, with over $1 billion running through all of its various operating, enterprise and special funds. That puts it well beyond even the closest ranking city in the county financially, which on a yearly basis over the last decade has varied from Fontana to Rancho Cucamonga to Victorville.
With the passage of Measure Q in 2022, as a city already outdistancing its local governmental rivals, Ontario boosted its revenues by some $96 million.
This has made Ontario the envy of other city officials, but many view its vaunted financial situation as a bane. As a consequence of its flush circumstance, Ontario offers its employees salaries and benefits that are much higher than those provided to staff members in other cities. Those cities find themselves competing with Ontario for experienced personnel, and many employees who work in Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, Upland and elsewhere, upon getting experience, opt to leave to take a position in Ontario, if they can land one. For cities that are less well-fixed than others, this has created a crisis when it comes to keeping valued employees, as those cities become viewed as a training ground for other jurisdictions.
Councilman Ruben Valencia, observing that it is unseemly and greedy of Leon and councilmen Jim Bowman and Alan Wapner and Councilwoman Debra Porada to up their already superior salaries even further, voted against the pay hike.
-M.G.