Even without knowing the dollar amount involved, that’s a pretty sweet deal. But the fact that a year’s salary for Broadnax is more than $420,000 sent Mayor Eric Johnson looking for ways to not only avoid paying that amount but to ensure that no future city managers have such a clause included in their agreements.
Broadnax has been serving since early May as city manager in Austin, where he’s collecting a $470,017 annual base salary. All this Broadnax pay drama got us to thinking: Who are the highest-paid city employees and how much do they earn?
Broadnax’s much publicized annual salary of more than $423,000 would’ve placed him at the top of the current list of highest Dallas city salaries. By a long shot, in fact. While the city seeks a new city manager, Interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert is making $367,383. That’s a raise from her salary of more than $319,000 as the deputy city manager, but it's not enough to top the list of Dallas city salaries.
We reached out to the city for a list of the Top 20 highest-paid Dallas employees. For now, without a permanent city manager in the palace, the highest salary in Dallas belongs to Cheryl Alston, the executive director of Employees’ Retirement Fund of the City of Dallas, who makes $387,891.42 per year. Alston oversees the pension plan for the civilian employees, that is, not the police department or fire department. Officials in Alston’s department make up an additional three spots on this list.
Each of the 20 highest-paid Dallas employees easily clears $200,000 annually, and many dozens of other positions pay an average annual salary between $100,000 and $200,000. The Dallas mayor is paid $80,000 per year. On the lower end, at least for full-time positions, an office assistant’s average salary is a little over $34,000 a year, some water meter reader jobs pay $40,000 and certain custodian jobs offer an average of $43,000 per year.
Here are the 20 highest-paid city of Dallas employees, as of May 2024.
- Cheryl Alston, Employees’ Retirement Fund executive director: $387,891.42
- Kimberly Bizor Tolbert, interim city manager: $367,683
- Tammy Palomino, city attorney: $325,000
- Jon Fortune, Deputy city manager: $319,725.00 (Fortune’s last day in Dallas is on June 7. He announced in May he will join Broadnax in Austin)
- Eddie Garcia, chief of police: $317,240.40
- David K. Etheridge, Employees’ Retirement Fund assistant administrator: $315,276.15
- Majed Al-Ghafry, assistant city manager: $310,902.19 (Al-Ghafry announced in May he had been hired by DeSoto as its city manager.)
- Natalie Jenkins Sorrell, Employees’ Retirement Fund compliance officer: $296,572.50
- Dominique Artis, chief of Dallas Fire-Rescue: $296,507.10
- John D. Jenkins, director, Park and Recreation: $274,887.32
- Jack Ireland, chief financial officer: $270,112.50
- Mary Elizabeth Cedillo-Pereira, assistant city manager: $248,062.50
- Robert M. Perez, Assistant City Manager: $242,550 (Perez begins as city manager for Topeka, Kansas, on June 11.)
- Sarah Standifer, water utility director: $235,000
- Patrick Carreno, aviation director: $231,750
- Edward Scott, Employees’ Retirement Fund assistant administrator: $219,073.27
- Billierae Johnson, city secretary: $214,240
- Mark Swann, city auditor: $214,240
- Elaine Flud Rodriguez, assistant city attorney: $212,946.76
- Sheri Kowalski, city controller: $210.810.60
