The Fayetteville City Council voted 8-2 on Monday to give City Manager Doug Hewett a 4% pay raise.
Councilmembers Deno Hondros and Johnny Dawkins voted against the pay increase.
Mayor Mitch Colvin and Councilmembers Kathy Jensen, Shakeyla Ingram, Mario Benavente, D.J. Haire, Derrick Thompson, Brenda McNair and Courtney Banks-McLaughlin voted for the raise.
The vote followed a session in which the council met behind closed doors with Hewett for about 10 minutes, then met privately without him for about 15 to 20 minutes.
With the raise, Hewett’s salary will go from $245,490 to $255,310, a $9,820 increase. The new pay is retroactive to July 1, the mayor said, which is when all city employees except for the city manager and city attorney got a 4% pay raise.
The city attorney and city manager did not previously get a 4% raise because they serve at the pleasure of the city council, and their compensation is handled with their contracts with the council. Fayetteville’s city attorney left for a new job in September; Interim City Attorney Lachelle H. Pulliam was appointed Sept. 11.
The city gave cost-of-living increases to the rest of the city employees last fiscal year and this fiscal year, the mayor said, while Hewett didn’t get a raise.
Hewett said his raise matches that of other employees, but he also offered a list of accomplishments as factors, including:
“And I think that’s reflected in the council’s performance evaluation of me,” Hewett said.
Why Hondros and Dawkins voted ‘no’ to Hewett’s pay raise
Hondros said he didn’t like giving Hewett a cost-of-living raise at his salary level, and he was not persuaded that Hewett had earned it
“It’s a little bit different deal for me, personally, when somebody’s making four or five times the median household income,” Hondros said. The Census Bureau says Fayetteville’s median household income was $48,923 as of 2021.
“If you go to the private sector, nobody gets a cost-of-living increase. That’s only with government,” Hondros said.
Hondros also said he felt there were certain performance indicators that he believed Hewett hadn’t met, but wouldn’t further elaborate.
Dawkins, too, said he felt that at Hewett’s pay level, the manager shouldn’t get a cost-of-living raise of nearly $10,000.
“I could have lived with 2%,” Dawkins said.
The councilmember said he voted against the city budget over the summer, which had a 4% pay increase for all levels of employees, because he preferred to do a 3% raise and give a $1,000 bonus to all employees who earn less than $100,000.
“We’re rewarding our highest paid employees again, and we have shirked our responsibility for our employees that make less than $100,000 a year,” Dawkins said. “He makes four times what the average family of four has to live on in Fayetteville, so no, I couldn’t go along with that.”
Manager has tenure with Fayetteville
The city manager serves at the pleasure of the City Council — and can be fired at any time.
Hewett has worked for Fayetteville on and off since 2004:
Hewett has also worked in local government in Halifax County and Wilmington, his website biography says, and he has a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Public Administration degree from North Carolina State University.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at 910-261-4710 and pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
