Boston Mayor Michelle Wu to receive $43,000 raise after reelection, will be paid $250,000 in 2026

Gayla Cawley, Boston Herald on Nov 12, 2025

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BOSTON — Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s reelection comes with a whopping $43,000 raise to bring her salary to $250,000 next year.

Wu and the City Council will both receive pay hikes to start off the new year, thanks to legislation passed by the Council in 2022.

While the Council has seen pay hikes annually since 2024 — with its pay jumping from $103,500 to $125,000 this January — the mayor’s 20% raise could only go into effect after the next election for that position, in 2026, per state ethics laws.

By comparison, wage increases for city councilors started after the 2023 municipal election, when only city council races were on the ballot.

Wu will see her salary increase from $207,000 to $250,000 to kick off the new year, while all 13 elected city councilors will see a $5,000 pay hike, from $120,000 to $125,000. The mayor typically makes twice as much as city councilors.

The pay increases that will be seen next year were a source of contention at the time of the proposed legislation in 2022.

The City Council opted to vote for a tiered increase after the body’s initial vote to hike its pay to $125,000 starting in 2024 was vetoed by Mayor Wu. Under that tiered structure, councilors saw their salaries increase from $103,500 to $115,000 in 2024, $120,000 in 2025, and will see a final salary increase of $125,000 in 2026.

City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune had put forward the $125,000 salary for 2024, in her previous iteration of government operations committee chair.

At the time, Louijeune had presented the raise as a compromise with other councilors who had lobbied for an even bigger pay hike, saying that the new amount of $125,000 would put the body in line with other cities.

Wu in her veto had cited similar concerns as other councilors, however, who had expressed discomfort with about a 21% pay hike when many lower-income city employees don’t get that kind of jump.

Still, the $125,000 salary for 2024 was unanimously passed by the Council, and when it was vetoed, Louijeune amended a new proposal to include the tiered increases to achieve that same salary by 2026, as part of a veto override.

The override passed by a 9-4 vote in November 2022, with Councilors Frank Baker, Michael Flaherty, Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy opposed. Baker and Flaherty have since left the Council, after opting against a reelection bid in 2023, but Baker mounted an unsuccessful comeback bid for an at-large seat in last week’s election.

In August 2022, Wu had proposed raising the council’s salary from $103,500 to $115,000 in 2024, with no further tiered increases, and the mayor’s salary from $207,000 to $230,000.

Ultimately, the council voted to bump the mayor’s pay to $250,000 in 2026. Wu will benefit from the nearly 21% raise in her second, four-year term after cruising to reelection last week.

Wu’s bid for a second term was uncontested in the general election, after she defeated her principal opponent, Josh Kraft, a son of the billionaire New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, by 49 points in the September primary. Kraft dropped out of the mayoral race two days later.

As for the City Council, all 12 incumbents who won reelection last week will benefit from a $5,000 raise in January, as will the newest councilor, Miniard Culpepper, who won the only open seat vacated by disgraced former Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson.

The Roxbury-centric District 7 seat won by Culpepper has been vacant since early July when Fernandes Anderson resigned after being convicted on federal corruption charges tied to a City Hall kickback scheme. She is serving a monthlong prison sentence and is set to be released on Saturday.

The 12 incumbents who will see a pay hike in January are Liz Breadon, Gabriela Coletta Zapata, Sharon Durkan, John FitzGerald, Ed Flynn, Ruthzee Louijeune, Julia Mejia, Erin Murphy, Enrique Pepén, Henry Santana, Benjamin Weber and Brian Worrell.

Coletta Zapata claimed Monday that she has secured the votes to become Council president for the next two-year term that begins in January, but her bid is being challenged by Mejia and Worrell.

Should Coletta Zapata be voted in as Council president by the body in early January, after councilors and the mayor are sworn in, she has named Santana as her vice president. Both are allies of the mayor, who worked for months to get her former employee Santana, who was seen as the most vulnerable at-large incumbent, reelected amid a comeback bid from Baker.

No further pay raises for the mayor or city council are set to take effect under the 2022 legislation, meaning that any additional salary increases would have to be proposed, and then approved by the City Council.

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