While campaigning for the Miami mayor’s seat last fall, Mayor Eileen Higgins called for a “deep dive” into Miami’s swelling operating budget, which in the past five years has jumped 57% to over $1.8 billion.
A quick look at the numbers suggests the answer may not require much digging: just follow the paychecks.
While overall spending has climbed across city government, the most significant budget increases are concentrated in employee compensation — the single largest and fastest-growing cost driver.
Despite only modest growth in the city’s workforce — up 5% over the past five years — spending on employee pay has surged.
Since 2021 salaries have increased 41% to $591.5 million and now accounts for roughly one-third of all non-capital spending. Benefits — retirement contributions and health insurance — have risen even faster, up 62% to $356.2 million. Together, salaries and benefits for the city’s 5,031 employees now account for 77% of Miami’s operating budget.
That growth is reflected across departments, large and small.
The police department, the city’s largest, saw its operating budget increase by 50% over five years — a $138 million jump to $415 million — driven largely by personnel costs, which account for nearly 90% of spending.
The three-person Office of Agenda Coordination — the city’s smallest department — saw its budget increase 40% over five years, nearly all of it spent on personnel, despite no growth in staffing.
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Parks and Recreation grew from $60 million to $77 million, a modest 28% increase. Even departments with little or no staffing growth posted sizable gains: the Zoning Department’s budget rose 44% to $6.9 million despite no increase in personnel.
In most cases, the driving force behind those increases is the same: the ever-rising cost of employees.
At least 110 City of Miami employees will earn at least $200,000 in the current fiscal year — more than double the number who reached that threshold just two years ago.
The increases are not the result of a single policy change, the Spotlight has learned, but a system of pay adjustments that operate simultaneously, and with a large degree of administrative discretion.
Employees can receive raises through several channels, including union-negotiated increases, promotions, anniversary “step” increases and salary adjustments, also called “merit” raises, authorized by department heads and approved by the city manager.
Those agreements are negotiated between unions and the city administration and ultimately approved by the City Commission. In recent contracts, AFSCME Local 1907 secured multiple across-the-board increases, including 6% raises in 2024 and 2025 for the 1,700 City of Miami workers it represents.
AFSCME Local 1907 declined an interview with the Spotlight.
While only the city’s union-represented employees are entitled to negotiated raises, former Miami City Manager Arthur Noriega, who stepped down in January, has in recent years extended those increases to all city workers, authorizing matching raises for all non-bargaining employees as well.
Union-linked raises are not the only ones offered to City of Miami employees. Most city workers — union and non-union alike — receive additional across-the-board, union-negotiated step increases, typically 5%, resulting, in recent years, in an 11% pay bump. Those raises, of course, are compounded over time, meaning each increase builds on the last and steadily pushes salaries higher.
And in Miami, those step increases add up. Unlike some municipalities that tie these step increases to milestone anniversaries — such as five, 10 or 15 years of service — Miami’s union contract defines an “anniversary” as an annual employment start date, meaning step increases can be dished out each year, subject to administrative approval.
In addition to union raises and step increases, employees may also benefit from the discretionary largess of the city manager who, under city policy, can administratively issue salary increases.
Such city manager-approved pay increases, in fact, have contributed to significant salary growth within the manager’s own office, with some employees’ pay rising as much as 47% over five years.
To illustrate the city’s range of pay increases — and how, once applied, they can accumulate over time — the Spotlight reviewed the salary histories (obtained, through a public records request) of a handful of randomly selected city employees.
Among them is Oracle Systems Administrator Guy Marcus of the city’s Innovation and Technology Department, which employs 82 full-time people with a budget this year of $18 million.
In October 2020, Marcus was earning a base salary of $147,729.09. By October 2025, his salary had climbed to $209,832.65 – a 42% increase in five years.
The salary jump came from a series of wage increases: six “across the board” raises ranging from 1% to 6% and three 5% step increases.
Assistant Director of Management and Budget Leon Michel, a non-bargaining city employee, earned a base salary of $167,556.16 in October 2020. City records show that since then Michel has received four across-the-board increases — three at 6% and one at 1% — along with three anniversary step increases, on top of three discretionary raises from the city manager, ranging from 2% to 5%.
This year he’s scheduled to earn $250,422.68 – a 50% jump over five years.
Like nearly all City of Miami employees whose salary histories were reviewed for this article, Michel’s raises far outpaced the Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) — a federal measure designed to keep wages in line with inflation, which over the past two years was set at 2.5% and 2.8%. (In 2023, amidst runaway inflation the rate was 8.7%, its highest rate in a quarter century).
Had Michel’s salary grown according to COLA rates, it would currently be set at $209,740 — a difference of $40,682 from his current take-home pay.
Noemi Darias-Sanfiel, an equal opportunity and senior diversity specialist in the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity Programs, did even better. Since 2021 Darias-Sanfiel has received six “across the board” wage increases and six anniversary step increases, bringing her salary to $120,553 – a jump of 64% in just five years.
Senior building inspector Alejandro Pascual notched a 46% pay increase over the same period, thanks to five union raises along with four step raises, taking his salary to $145,736.
Five years ago, Yadissa Calderon earned $130,000 helping oversee the city’s Procurement Department, which handles the purchase of goods and services from outside vendors. After several pay increases — including an 8% “merit” raise unrelated to union or step increases — Calderon is now the department’s second-highest-paid employee, earning $198,000, a 52% increase.
A city spokesperson declined to elaborate on the policies and procedures governing city manager-approved raises, saying they are entirely discretionary at the administrative level, and also declined to provide a list of employees who have received such increases, saying the data “is not readily available.”
Angela V. Roberts, the city’s Director of Human Resources, declined an interview request from the Spotlight.
The city’s salary surge has left few, if any, corners of City Hall untouched.
After a series of department reorganizations, the City Manager’s office — which is responsible for proposing the city’s annual budget for commission review and approval — has cut its staff nearly in half over the past five years, from 24 to 13 employees. Yet while staffing has declined by 46%, the office’s overall budget has increased by about 62%.
Even Higgins’ own Office of the Mayor — the one that promised a “deep dive” into an ever-ballooning budget — has seen its own spending climb 32% in five years, nearly all of it driven by salary increases.
