PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — Portsmouth’s council members and mayor will see a significant raise next summer, their first since the 1990s.

Council voted 7-0 on Tuesday night to approve raising the cap on council members’ salaries to $43,000 annually from the current $23,000, and the mayor’s salary to $47,000 from the current $25,000. The raises wouldn’t take effect until July 1, 2025, after election season for several members of council and Mayor Shannon Glover.

The vote came after the Virginia General Assembly passed House Bill 456 this past session. The bill authorized an increase in city council and mayoral salaries in the commonwealth for the first time since 1996. The caps on salaries for public officials under the bill are based on a municipality’s population.

Most of the citizen speakers at Tuesday’s event said they believed council and the mayor should get raises, but several were skeptical about the amount of the salary increases and their rollout.

Portsmouth chose to approve the maximum increase under the state law. A motion from Council Mark Hugel to just increase pay for mayor to $37,000 and for council members to $33,000 was shot down.

Several on council said they believed the increases were fair based on the amount of work required, including speaking with constituents by phone and in-person and at events outside of city council meetings.

“I do believe this council deserves the increase. It has been 30 years since this council has received an increase,” said Vice Mayor Lisa Lucas-Burke, who’s running for mayor. “And I’ve often thought in my mind that this council should at least get a two or three percent increase when city officials, or city staff, got an increase. Cause that would be fair. But we never did and we never complained. We continued to do the work we were elected to do.”  

Councilman Bill Moody said he was “not ashamed of it” in voting yes, citing the inflationary changes since 1996.

“Everybody up here, in the extra curricular stuff that we do, and attending meetings and civic functions, we put a lot of hours in. We put a lot of hours in at home, answering calls, looking over the agenda package. So I think it’s long overdue and hopefully it won’t go another 30 years where a council has to be faced with a large amount, which seems like a large amount, but when you index it for inflation, again it’s keeping up, not even keeping up with inflation.”

Hampton City Council is set to take up a similar measure about council and mayor pay raises on Wednesday night.