Spokane City Council members will receive substantial pay raises next year unless voters submit a referendum by the end of September to reject them.
The move follows a 3-2 vote last week by the city's salary review commission.
Starting next year, the salary for council members would increase to nearly $73,000, a roughly 34% increase from this year; the council president's salary would surge to about $94,500, a roughly 37% increase. The average salary in the Spokane metropolitan area was roughly $68,500 in 2025, according to a report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The median household income in Spokane County in 2025 was north of $92,000, according to Spokane Trends.
The commission had considered raising the mayor's salary as well — one commissioner floated $230,000 as a possibility — but ultimately decided against it. In a July letter to the commission, Mayor Lisa Brown argued her salary was sufficient and it would be inappropriate to increase it given the city's ongoing budget woes and the general economic landscape residents faced.
Salaries for council members, council president and mayor will all increase again by 3.2% in 2028.
It would be the first major raise in over a decade following years of nominal cost-of-living increases for a legislative body that increasingly sees itself as a full-time professional body and not the part-time volunteers once envisioned by city leaders.
The salary for council members stayed flat at $18,000 from 1991 until 2009, when it was increased to $30,000. In 2017, the salary for council members significantly increased again to just north of $45,000; at the same time, the Council President's salary increased to nearly $59,000. The mayor's salary was lowered in late 2015 to $168,000 — adjusted for inflation, this salary would be equivalent to roughly $231,000 today.
In recent years, salary increases for the city's legislative and executive leadership has been relatively nominal. Between 2017 and 2026, the average annual increase for a council member was 1.85%
Neither the mayor nor City Council members directly decide their own salaries, deferring that authority to the independent, five-member salary review commission. Those members, however, are nominated by the mayor and appointed by the City Council to staggered four-year terms.
The commission is tasked with assigning reasonable salaries sufficient to attract qualified candidates. To justify its decision to raise salaries, the commission pointed to the rising cost of living, the relatively small pace of prior increases for council members, and salaries for councils in comparable cities, among other data points.
Carl Reed Jessen, chair of the commission, voted against the salary increase. In a dissenting opinion, he argued that the duties of council members are poorly defined, and even if they report working at least 40 hours a week, they are not specifically required to do so and there is no oversight to require it. He argued that the city's current elected officials are "of the highest caliber," and a salary increase wasn't necessary to entice quality candidates.
Spokane Councilman Michael Cathcart, who is the council's lone conservative and is currently running for Spokane County auditor, argued that a higher salary for council members is likely necessary.
"Undoubtedly, the role of city council has become a full-time position in order to at least meet the expectations of the community, which means it gets harder at the existing salary level to find the standout community members who can put aside their current work to do this," he said. "I think it's not a wrong direction."
But he argued the timing for such a decision was difficult given the city's budget challenges — the council recently laid off two of its better paid managers — and because the public has never given a final answer as to whether the council should be a full-time gig or not.
"I really do believe we should ask the community for their input directly ... if it should be a full-time job," he said.
The commission's recommendations automatically take effect unless a referendum is filed before Sept. 28, 30 days after the commission's decision. According to the City Charter, which functions as Spokane's voter-approved constitution, the salary increase will be paused if a referendum is filed with at least 10% as many signatures as there were votes in the city's last general election.
There were roughly 65,000 votes cast in city limits during the 2025 general election, meaning a successful referendum would require around 6,500 signatures before the end of the month.
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