A Boston school custodian cleaned up as he retired with $567,427 in take-home pay last year, with a barrelful of that cash coming from unused vacation time.
The city payroll, posted at the close of day Friday, shows eight Boston employees earning more than $500,000. They are mostly police who add to their gross pay with overtime and details.
But that one public schools custodian, Fleet Services Manager Paul Sordillo, earned $413,783 in “other” bucks a City Hall spokesperson confirmed was “6,000-plus hours of unused vacation time as a BPS custodian earned over decades.” Sordillo’s union, the Herald was told, allows for banking vacation time.
Sordillo’s base pay was $108,815 last year — and he tossed in “retro” and “overtime” hours for more than $20,000 in each category, for a final year on the city dime at more than half a million.
“That’s ridiculous,” said MassFiscal’s Paul Craney. “When people are upset about taxes in Boston, they should just look at this payroll. Boston, like Massachusetts, doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem.”
The city’s payroll grew by more than 2.28% last year, from $2.14 billion in 2023 to $2.19 billion in 2024, when accounting for regular pay, overtime and “other” pay, among other add-ons to annual salaries.
The average salary for city employees was $105,034 in 2024, a big jump over the prior year when employees were paid $74,330 on average, payroll records show.
Many city employee salaries balloon significantly with “gross pay,” which includes whopping amounts of overtime topping out at $223,773 for one police officer.
Also, perhaps driving the growth is the 54 new positions created in 2024 by the Wu administration — as part of 301 new positions that have been added during the mayor’s first term.
Roughly a third of those 301 newly created positions earn more than $100,000, and those new employees are paid $84,781 on average, the Herald previously reported.
Mayor Michelle Wu has been pushing since last March for the state Legislature to approve a hike in the city’s commercial tax rates to provide relief for homeowners.
At the same time, the mayor has rejected calls to cut the city’s $4.6 billion budget, which grew by 8% this fiscal year — which has been a source of contention for the commercial sector and lawmakers who oppose her tax shift legislation.
Wu typically rolls out her annual city budget proposal in early spring, and it remains to be seen what growth her spending plan will include.
The 2024 payroll shows that 78 others earned $400,000 or more; 435 city employees pulled down $300,000-plus; 1,810 banked $200,000 and up; and, 8,384 clocked in at $100,000 or more.
Mayor Michelle Wu earned $207,000 with no overtime or other pay.
Boston’s 2024 city employee payroll: ‘Your Tax Dollars at Work’
