Concord City Manager Tom Aspell’s pay increased steadily over the years to the point where he was the first city employee to make more than $200,000 in a single year.

In 2019, Aspell made $200,828 in total compensation, which is more than $50,000 higher than Deputy City Managers Carlos Baia and Brian LeBrun, the next highest-paid active city employees, who each made $147,864.

Aspell won’t see a jump in pay this year as the City Council decided not to increase his base pay at its meeting July 13. However, his benefits are changing. The city is paying slightly more in into one of his two retirement accounts, and allowing him to accrue up to 70 days of unused vacation time instead of 60, which he can cash out when he leaves. At the same time, he was moved to a new health insurance plan that includes higher deductibles

“I’ll put it this way, so I don’t have to single anyone out, but this is an absolutely true statement: What we are experiencing across the country and across the world is going to have a huge impact on this community,” Concord’s mayor Jim Bouley said weeks ago at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We are going to have to live with the money we have coming in,” he added. “To think that the economic impact the city is going to feel won’t affect every single person within the city organization – it’s real. It will. It’s going to be top to bottom.”

But most employees saw the same contractual raises in contracts that were approved before the virus struck and after. Contracts for Concord Police supervisors as well as workers in the General Services Department and Recreation Department approved at the end of 2019 carried 2.75% wage increases.

Three-year contracts for city firefighters and Concord Police patrolmen approved by the City Council in April, after the coronavirus struck, afforded the same 2.75% annual wage increase. The same went for a contract with employees in the city Community Development and Code Administration departments, which was approved in May.

Despite those raises, some employees will see an even higher boost in pay. In June, despite calls from some community members to take away funding from the police, councilors voted to increase the department’s $20 million budget line by nearly $1 million, mostly to increase the base pay of officers. Higher base pay will equal higher overtime costs and retirement contributions in the next fiscal year and future.

The numbers

A review of the payroll records of more than 500 employees working in the city of Concord in 2019 shows 60 employees were paid more than six figures. Two-thirds of those employees work for the police or fire departments – 21 police and 18 fire.

City employees earned $ 3.8 million in overtime in 2019, $2.5 million was for police and fire employees, according to city records. The average overtime in police and fire was $12,381, with the highest being $52,657 for Police Officer Joseph Russell, who was paid $128,479 in 2019, which is about $1,000 more than Police Chief Bradley Osgood.

One of the employees in police and fire earning more than $100,000 in 2019 was a woman.

With total earnings of $200,828 in 2019, Aspell is the highest-paid city employee and the only one to make more than $200,000 in a year.

Men in leadership roles

Women made up nine of the city’s top 60 earners in 2019.

Aspell said the city has been working hard to increase gender representation in leadership positions. The city prosecutor, city clerk, assistant finance director and associate engineer are all women.

The disparity in the city’s top earners comes from two areas: police and fire, and overtime, Aspell said.

Aspell said there’s still a very low percentage of women working in both the police and fire departments. Only a handful of the officers on Concord’s force are women and few are in leadership roles.

“Particularly at police, fire, general services, there haven’t been very many women involved in that field 20 years ago to get into the high-level positions now,” Aspell said.

Given the higher compensation of those at the top, overtime tends to drive those individuals up the list of city earners.

“I don’t know if with the way society has been set up, if women have the same opportunities to work that overtime,” he said. “From the work standpoint they do, but in the situations that a lot of women are in, they may not have that choice to make because they have so many other responsibilities that they can’t work that extra 20 hours a week, which suppresses their salaries and eventually, suppresses their retirement funds.”

“I think it’s the way, unfortunately, society is set up,” he added.

City manager’s contract

As with past years, Aspell’s contract is made public by the city, but his review is not.

Many city managers in the state choose not to have their reviews made public, but a few do. Dover’s city manager has had his review process public in past years to promote transparency in the city.

“I’m pretty sure I could request it to be public if I chose, but I choose not to,” Aspell said earlier this year.

There are no other municipal employees in Concord that undergo a public review process. The Concord School District doesn’t publicly review its superintendent either.

As in past years, the public could not see Aspell’s contract before it was voted on. The Monitor received a copy of the new contract Tuesday morning.

Last fall, the city began providing cost-items related to proposed contracts for police, fire and other employees to the public prior to a vote.

The city manager is the only position in the city that is not governed by a salary scale or job grading, according to city documents. Instead, it is a charter-governed role, which stipulates under Section 21 that the council evaluate the manager’s performance in April and “determine, in public session, whether the city manager’s overall performance in office has been satisfactory or unsatisfactory.”

Aspell’s past contracts, which are available at city hall, also provide fringe benefits like a $100-a-month telephone allowance, a $400-a-month car allowance, and $75 a month to maintain his computer. On top of the regular contributions to his pension with the New Hampshire Retirement System, the city paid another $16,145 into a special city manager retirement account in 2019. He gets 30 sick days a year and is eligible for a paid three-month sabbatical every three years. Those benefits, like his salary, have increased over the years.

“I think you have to look at the organization, the history and years of experience,” Aspell said this year of his salary. “We have 100 people in the police department, 100 people in the fire department, 150 in general services, have an airport, have an arena, have a golf course, have water and wastewater plants, all of these different responsibilities and a $100-plus million budget.”

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