Beverly City Council Approves $241K In Retroactive Municipal Employee Payments

BEVERLY, MA — Forty-three current and four former Beverly municipal employees will receive retroactive pay totaling more than $240,000 after the City Council approved the payments recommended through a review process to determine equitable pay for positions compared to similar communities on the North Shore and across the state.

The two-year review process culminated in the recommendation that the city reclassify several positions and issue the back pay to the start of the review process. That meant nearly a quarter-million in retroactive pay — including to workers who are now no longer employed by the city.

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"We recognize that the whole point of this is to recognize where we are competitively with like communities, where we are competitively regionally, and ensure that we both get high-quality applicants for our positions and that we are able to retain really strong employees, and that employees are treated fairly among their peers," Mayor Mike Cahill said. "So I made a commitment that there be retroactivity from when the study was done to the beginning of the (current collective bargaining agreement).

"And to what I believe to be right and fair, that had to apply to someone who was working when the review process started, but has since retired."

City officials said they believe this is a one-time review and would not be considered precedent in other negotiations because of the unique nature of the study and because the retroactive pay offers are not a negotiation but a one-time offer from the city to reclassify positions.

The City Council had heard testimony on the payments at a recent public hearing, but delayed a vote until Monday night pending further review of the recommendation from Budget Analyst Gerry Perry.

Perry said he, ultimately, supported the payments, which he said will include not only the retro pay but amount to a $500,000 budget addition based on new payment scales heading into Fiscal Year 2027 — in which the city is facing a nearly $4 million budget deficit.

"This wasn't black and white," Perry said. "This was a little bit of a gray area. But I will say that, as your budget analyst, what really persuaded me was that (with other city collective bargaining agreements) we've now upgraded all these salaries across the board. The Public Works and the Public Services had not received that. They were kind of left behind ... and it did take a while to get this done.

"What really persuaded me at the end, and why I did recommend to do this, is that it's an equity thing. They are now equitable with the other city unions."

He allowed that the DPW and DPS had struggled to hire and maintain employees in recent years because of the perceived inequity in pay among peer communities.

"It was woefully inadequate," he said. "If this doesn't do the trick, we have to ask why. Hopefully, this will help to hire and retain staff.

"At the end of the day, it's a financial challenge to the city. But I think it's equitable and fair to the public services people compared to the other bargaining groups in the city."