Santa Clara city manager, who has been on the job for seven months, receives merit pay raise

Santa Clara once had the highest paid city manager’s in the state, but before Tuesday night, current City Manager Jovan Grogan wasn’t even the highest paid employee in the city.

In a split 4-3 vote, the Santa Clara City Council approved a merit-based raise of 1.23% for Grogan, bringing his base salary up to $418,220.76. Mayor Lisa Gillmor and Councilmembers Anthony Becker and Kathy Watanabe cast the dissenting votes.

For years, a divided council and the community have argued over the city manager’s hefty salary.

Deanna Santana, who was fired in 2022 with a majority of the council citing a “lack of confidence” in her doing her job, had a base salary of $468,674.97 before she was axed. Santana was the fourth highest paid city manager in the state that same year, pulling in $785,296 in total compensation, according to the State Controller’s Office.

When Grogan was hired last year, his salary was set at $405,056.40. While he received a 2% cost of living adjustment last month, Grogan’s annual pay was still lower than the city’s chief operating and chief electric utility officers — two positions that report to him.

“To me, it makes sense that the city manager should be the highest paid employee in the city,” Councilmember Suds Jain said.

But not everyone on the council agreed.

“I just think it’s too soon to be approving a merit based salary adjustment,” Watanabe said. “I would rather hold off until there’s been at least a year of employment on the books and to be able to do an assessment at this time.”

Santana received her first merit-based raise in 2020 after two years on the job — a 11.2% pay bump that netted an extra $18,590 to her total compensation. In exchange though, the council eliminated Santana’s $3,750 monthly housing allowance, which added up to $45,000 a year.

Santa Clara officials have previously defended the high salary to oversee the city of roughly 127,000 residents, saying the job includes managing the city’s electric utility company Silicon Valley Power and Levi’s Stadium. In comparison, San Jose City Manager Jennifer Maguire, who runs a city of nearly a million residents, made $479,265 in total compensation in 2022 — hundreds of thousands of dollars less than Santana’s $785,296.