City Council offers Sellers 8.5 percent salary increase

The City Council’s proposed three-year contract extension to retain City Manager Scott Sellers offers him an annual salary of $196,503, which is an 8.5 percent increase over his current salary and, according to a comparison table prepared the by City, 69 cents per day more than the average compensation doled out to other city managers in comparable area cities.

In years two and three of the contract, his salary will increase by the same percentage "budgeted for all non-sworn city employees, or sworn employees (whichever is greater)."

In addition to a $9,600 per year car allowance and a $1,200 a year cell phone allowance, "the City agrees to pay the manager’s full contribution to the Texas Municipal Retirement System (this is in lieu of Social Security, which municipal employees are not eligible for), not to exceed 21 percent of manager’s base salary into the system on manager’s behalf, in equal proportionate amounts each pay period, and to transfer ownership to succeeding employers upon manager’s resignation or discharge. In addition, the City will contribute $5,000 each year to the manager’s 457 Plan and such contribution shall be paid in equal installments similar to payroll." The contract also obligates the City to pay 100 percent of the health insurance premiums for Sellers and his qualified dependents, a standard agreement in any contract of this sort. But the contract also stipulates the city "agrees to continue providing these benefits at no cost to the manager and the manager's qualified dependents upon his retirement if manager continues employment with the City as its city manager through at least March 2025 and retires from the City on or after March 2025. The health benefits to the manager and the manager’s qualified dependents will cease upon the manager obtaining other municipal employment with health care or until manager reaches the age of Medicare eligibility."

The total value of Sellers’s proposed contract, which should be a part of the City Council’s Jan. 10 meeting agenda, is $243,515.62. Coincidentally, that package is 1.3 percent more than the total compensation package received by the city manager of Leander, whose population is 1.3 percent smaller than Kyle’s. It might also be noted, however, that Sellers’s total compensation is $19,192.88 less than that received by the city manager in Seguin, which also has a population that’s 11,536 smaller than Kyle’s. But Seguin also has far more city employees than Kyle as the city has its own departments for animal services, a convention and visitors bureau, fire and EMS in-house, a municipally managed golf course and an in-house electric utility department.

You can access the city manager’s proposed contract in its entirety as well as the comparison tables I mentioned above here.