Raises for Culver City Management positions on the table

The City Council will decide on a potential raise for a handful of city employees at its meeting Monday night, with City Manager Odis Jones and City Attorney Heather Baker headlining the list.

In addition to a base increase of $45,000 — or just over 12% of his current $370,000 annual pay — to his salary, Jones is also requesting a temporary $37,000 increase reflecting his added responsibilities as Executive Director of the Culver City Public Finance Authority (CCPFA), applying retroactively from the date the CCPFA was established to December 27, 2026.

Additional benefits and bonuses offered to Jones in his contract may also be bolstered. The largest of these additional bonuses proposed by Jones in an amended contract is an increase to the city’s maximum potential loan commitment for a residency incentive included in the agreement by $700,000, from $2.8 million to $3.5 million.

This loan would also fully finance a purchase, instead of financing 90% as outlined in the original agreement. However, the residency must be purchased “within the corporate boundaries of Culver City,” effectively limiting the loan to purchases within the city’s borders. The city also currently provides temporary rental assistance for Jones, which is unchanged from a March 2026 amendment that set the total amount at $6,000 per month.

Unlike the salaries for the city attorney and many other city positions, the terms in City Manager Jones’ current contract calls for annual cost-of-living adjustments based on the 12-month change in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, even without the proposed adjustments.

That number was 3.1% in December 2025 and is currently 4.1%, which would be between $11,470 and $15,170 based on Jones’ current $370,000 salary.

Consideration of Jones’ request comes alongside a larger adjustment being separately considered to compensation for several new groupings of Management Positions, which were “separated from the broader employee population based on the confidential nature of the employees’ duties.”

This covers a wide range of city positions, from mental health specialists to plan check engineers to code enforcement analysts and officers, and the proposal comes from city staff rather than Jones himself.

One of these increases is for the City Attorney, a position currently held by Heather Baker. Unlike Jones, the salary Baker and any future City Attorney would be given is on a salary step system, where qualifications and previous experience help the city determine one of several escalating “salary steps” to use for that position.

The highest step for the City Attorney position will increase by approximately 7.6% to a salary of $370,000.

The remaining management positions will receive increases more closely aligned with the CPI, with the proposed 3% raise retroactive to July 1 somewhat aligned with the 12-month CPI increase of 3.7% in July 2026.

However, these salaries are determined through the same salary step system as the city attorney's and are not directly tied to CPI changes. Instead, the proposal calls for a 3% increase this year followed by a 3.5% and 4% increase over the next two years, respectively.

According to staff reports, these raises directly increase city expenditures for the 2026-27 fiscal year by $440,770. This includes the salary bumps, along with increases to other benefits like transportation allowance and vacation accrual policies, designed to create a stronger benefit distinction for management and executive-level positions over others in the city.

For more information, view the staff reports for Action Items A-4 and A-5 on the November 9, 2026 Culver City City Council Agenda.