SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Her salary was already one of the highest among California’s city managers when she arrived four years ago, and now Deanna Santana’s latest raise, of $20,000, has ignited another heated debate about how much is too much.
Some Santa Clara City Council members who weren’t around when Santana was offered the city manager’s job in 2017 want a redo of her contract. They say they’ve heard numerous complaints from constituents about Santana’s $468,674.97 salary, and it doesn’t help that the city’s budget has taken a hit by the pandemic.
Santana did not respond to an email seeking comment, but at a Dec. 14 meeting she called suggestions that she shouldn’t receive her agreed-upon 4.5% cost of living adjustment “workplace intimidation and hostility.”
In a statement, city spokesperson Lon Peterson defended Santana’s salary.
“The City of Santa Clara is an extremely complex organization that provides multiple lines of services, including the Stadium Authority, Silicon Valley Power, water and sewer utility services, as well as other public services provided by public agencies, such as police, fire, parks & recreation, libraries, public works, planning and building,” Peterson said in an email.
“Due to the complexity and structure of the organization, 20 percent of the city manager’s time is charged to Silicon Valley Power, and another 20 percent is charged to the Stadium Authority,” Peterson added.
The council approved Santana’s pay raise in November 2020 but made it effective Dec. 26, 2021. That bumped up her base salary to $468,674.97. Santana’s contract, which she signed at the time of her hire from the city of Sunnyvale, states that she’s entitled to all cost of living adjustments given to bargaining Unit 9, whose members include unclassified managers.
The city auditor and the city attorney have the same arrangement, although both positions currently are vacant.
At the Dec. 14 meeting, when approving salary raises for city employees, three new council members lamented that they were also bound to sign off on Santana’s raise as part of an administrative procedure. They then called for a closed session in the future to see if the contract can be renegotiated.
With the city still reeling from pandemic-related budget cuts, renegotiating may be a way to “stop the bleeding of taxpayers’ money,” Councilman Anthony Becker said at the time.
“A review of executive staff’s compensation is just one of the many items we need to help restore funds to critical city services and focus on the issues that really impact Santa Clarans,” he told this news organization this week.
The city manager’s pay has been a point of contention since her hiring in 2017.
At the time, then-Councilman Dominic Caserta declared his “no” vote on her contract one of the “proudest votes” he’s ever taken. More than four years later, Councilman Kevin Park and Becker both said they still hear complaints.
“That has been an overwhelming point from the public. Whenever I talk to the public about any of the money and any of the salaries, the city manager’s salary always comes up,” Park said.
Mayor Lisa Gillmor, who voted to hire Santana and is the only council member left from 2017, did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2020, Santana’s total compensation — which includes benefits — was $765,152, according to the California State Controller’s office.
She was the second-highest compensated city manager in the state behind the city manager of Fontana, whose total compensation was $942,745 in 2020. Fontana’s population is nearly 100,000 bigger than Santa Clara’s roughly 135,000.
Santana’s total compensation also exceeded those of her peers in the Bay Area’s largest cities. San Jose’s city manager made $477,728 in 2020, and San Francisco’s $398,668.24.
“Our city manager works really hard, and she’s really smart,” Vice Mayor Suds Jain said. “She’s worth a good salary certainly, and she’s very competent, but I just think it’s embarrassing for the city of Santa Clara to have a salary that high.”
Santana’s base salary when hired was $372,886, and among the perks she also received were a $3,750 monthly housing allowance and a $550 monthly car allowance. She’s previously defended her hefty compensation package by citing her many years of experience.
Before she came to Santa Clara, she served 3 1/2 years as Sunnyvale’s city manager and three years as Oakland’s city administrator. While working for Oakland, she often butted heads with politicians and unions.
Last year, she received an 11.2% merit raise of $45,171, which boosted her base salary to $448,491. Her monthly housing allowance was eliminated, though, which Gillmor at the time said negated much of that raise. Only three of the seven current council members were on the council then — Gillmor, Raj Chahal and Karen Hardy.
Chahal was the only one to vote against the merit raise, explaining that Santana’s salary was already too generous. Given the city’s budget, he now says it’s the council’s “moral authority and fiduciary duty” to review the contract.
A date has yet to be announced for the closed-door negotiations, but Peterson said that if the council ultimately decides it wants to lower Santana’s compensation, she’d have to agree to it, as stated in her contract.
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