A $220,000 contract, paid at $409,906: how Santa Clarita’s City Council raised its City Manager’s salary 86 percent without ever amending the contract — or stating the cost

The City’s own salary schedules called Ken Striplin’s pay “per contract” for five years. The night the Council added an extra 3.5 percent that no contract provides, the label changed to “per resolution.” The minutes do not show that anyone said the number out loud.

By D. Collins, Investigative Reporter  |  Santa Clarita, CA  |  [[PUBLICATION DATE — not before Nov 20, 2026]]

Based on 37 City records produced November 12, 2026 under Public Records Act Request #11249939, the City Manager’s employment agreement and its three amendments, the City’s posted pay schedules, and written questions sent to every Councilmember, the City Attorney and the City Manager.

SANTA CLARITA — On September 11, 2012, the Santa Clarita City Council signed an employment agreement with Kenneth W. Striplin to become City Manager at a salary of $220,000 a year. Fourteen years later the contract still says $220,000. The City’s pay schedule says $409,906.

Nothing in between was done by contract. Good Shepherd Media obtained and read all thirty-seven records the City produced in response to a Public Records Act request, together with the agreement and its three amendments posted on the City’s website. The records show that every increase was made by City Council resolution inside December “mid-year budget adjustment” items or June budget items — packets that run to hundreds of pages and whose Fiscal Impact sections report tens of millions of dollars in budget changes without once stating what the City Manager’s raise would cost.

The records also show something smaller and more telling. For five years, from the schedule adopted in December 2016 through the one adopted in December 2020, the City printed the City Manager’s hourly rate under a heading of its own with a two-word notation: “per contract.” On December 14, 2021, the Council adopted a resolution giving every employee 3 percent and the City Manager “an additional 3.5 percent.” The schedule attached to that resolution prints his new rate, $154.41 an hour, with a different notation: “per resolution.”

The City’s own document stopped crediting the contract the moment the pay outran it.

 

The ladder

The salary schedules the City adopted each year are the only public record of what the City Manager was actually paid. Read in order, they form a ladder. The City produced the rungs; it did not produce every resolution that built them.

Effective	Hourly	Annual	Change	Record produced?
Dec. 1, 2012 (contract)	$105.77	$220,000	—	Agreement §3
Jan. 2014	—	≈$231,000	+5%	Yes — Res. 13-83 (contract §3)
July 4, 2015	$118.14	$245,731	+1.25% COLA + ≈5% unexplained	COLA yes; the other ≈5% no
Jan. 2016	$124.05	$258,024	+5%	Yes — Res. 15-81 §4 (contract §3)
Jan. 14, 2017	$126.53 per contract	$263,182	+2% COLA	Yes — Res. 16-44, 16-75
July 1, 2017	$130.33 per contract	$271,086	+3% COLA	Yes — Res. 17-63 (presented by Striplin)
Jan. 1, 2019	$134.56 per contract	$279,885	+3.25%	No
Jan. 1, 2020	$139.27 per contract	$289,682	+3.5%	No
Jan. 1, 2021	$139.27 per contract	$289,682	0	Yes — Res. 20-82
Dec. 25, 2021	$154.41 per resolution	$321,173	+10.87%	Res. 21-64 explains 6.6% (3% + 3.5%); the other 4% no
June 2024	$173.69	$361,275	+12.5% since 2021	Not yet (City says by Nov. 30)
July 2025	$189.49	$394,139	+9.1%	Not yet
July 2026	$197.07	$409,906	+4.0%	Not yet

Annual figures are hourly × 2,080. “Record produced?” means whether the City included the authorizing resolution in its November 12 production. The 2015 figure is about 5 percent above what the contract, the 2014 raise and the 2015 COLA together produce; no produced record accounts for the difference.

What the contract actually allows

Section 3 of the 2012 agreement is short. It sets $220,000. It promises raises of “not less than 5%” in 2014 and in 2016 if the Council, after an annual review, finds that he “has met performance expectations.” It adds one sentence: “Additional merit increases may be provided to the Employee at the City Council’s discretion.”

Section 17.B lets general cost-of-living adjustments given to management employees pass through to him. Section 16 requires the Council and the City Manager to develop, in writing, the goals and performance criteria on which he will be evaluated, and requires an evaluation at least once a year.

So the contract contemplates three kinds of increase: the two scheduled 5 percent raises, the general COLA, and “merit increases” tied to the Section 16 evaluation. The records show the first two clearly. They do not show the third. In the 2021 packet — the one with the extra 3.5 percent — there is no evaluation, no reference to written goals, no finding, and no reason. Good Shepherd Media asked the City Attorney in writing which category the 2021, 2024, 2025 and 2026 increases fall under. [[CITY ATTORNEY ANSWER OR “The City Attorney did not respond by the deadline.”

The night of December 14, 2021

Two items sat next to each other on the agenda that night. Item 16 introduced an ordinance amending Municipal Code section 2.08.100 so that the City Manager could be removed only by four of the Council’s five votes, at a regular meeting. Item 17 was the mid-year budget adjustment — a $56.4 million revenue item whose second resolution raised every employee’s pay 3 percent and the City Manager’s 6.6 percent.

The minutes of Item 16 record that City Attorney Joseph Montes presented, that two residents spoke, and a 5–0 vote. The minutes of Item 17 record that Carmen Magaña “provided the staff report,” that Councilmember Marsha McLean asked about Heritage Junction funds, and a 5–0 vote: Weste, Gibbs, McLean, Miranda, Smyth.

California’s open-meeting law, the Brown Act, requires that before a local agency takes final action on the salary or benefits of a local agency executive, it “orally report a summary of a recommendation for a final action on the salaries, salary schedules, or compensation paid in the form of fringe benefits” during the open meeting where the action is taken (Government Code § 54953(c)(3)). The minutes of Item 17 do not record any such summary. The staff report’s narrative described the resolution as “a salary adjustment for employees and the City Manager.” The words “3.5 percent” appear once, in Section 3 of the resolution itself, on page [[X]] of a [[Y]]-page packet. The dollar figure — $321,173 — appears nowhere.

Good Shepherd Media asked each Councilmember whether they knew the figure when they voted and whether anyone said it aloud. Good Shepherd Media has also requested the meeting video. [[VIDEO FINDING: “The video shows…” / “The City had not produced the video by publication.”]]

Four weeks later, on January 11, 2022, the Council adopted the four-fifths ordinance and approved the contract amendment that wrote it into Mr. Striplin’s agreement. Four residents spoke against it. Mr. Montes told the Council that “the municipal code is subject to change and updates are conducted in an open setting.” Mayor Weste praised the City Manager’s work. The vote was 5–0. The minutes record the measure as “Ordinance No. 21-1” — the same number the City had assigned, a year earlier, to an accessory-dwelling-unit ordinance.

2015: the answer was printed before the question was asked

The pattern was older than 2021. The staff report for December 8, 2015 — written and published before the meeting — told the Council: “On December 8, 2015, the City Council will meet with the City Manager in closed session and provide an annual review of his performance. If the City Council determines the City Manager has met performance expectations, the City Manager’s annual salary will be increased by 5% effective January 2016, as reflected on the attached 2016 Salary Schedule.”

The attached schedule already printed the increased number: $124.05 an hour, Grade 80, footnoted “salary is subject to adjustment by contract rather than steps.” The closed-session evaluation and the open-session raise happened the same night, and the raise was in the packet first.

The cost that was never written down

Every City Council agenda report in Santa Clarita ends with a section titled Fiscal Impact. In the four reports that carried a City Manager pay or benefit increase, that section reads, in full:

The City Manager’s raise is a line item in none of them. In 2013 it was one sentence, placed after the paragraph creating a $60 Cottage Food Operations permit fee. In 2019 the Council approved a contract amendment raising his vacation from 20 to 30 days a year; the staff report mentions it only in the recommended-action line and in Section 6 of the resolution, and the narrative never does. Under Section 12 of his agreement, vacation above three times the annual accrual is cashed out every year and all of it is cashed out when he leaves. Ten extra days at the 2020 rate is $11,141.60 a year in cashable value. The report assigned it no cost.

Good Shepherd Media asked each Councilmember whether they have ever been given the dollar cost of a City Manager increase, in writing, before voting. [[ANSWERS BY NAME — Weste / Ayala / McLean / Gibbs / Miranda

Who presents the raise

Municipal Code section 2.08.060 makes the City Manager responsible for preparing the City’s salary plan. The resolutions recite it: “the City Manager to prepare a proposed salary plan for all employees of the City.” The City Manager’s own rate sits inside that plan.

From 2013 through 2021 the mid-year items that carried his raises were presented by Carmen Magaña, who rose from Finance Manager to Director of Administrative Services — a position that reports to the City Manager. On June 27, 2017, the minutes record that “City Manager Ken Striplin provided the staff report” on the budget item whose sixth resolution gave a 3 percent adjustment “for Unrepresented Employees, Represented Employees, and the City Manager.” The City Attorney, whose firm’s hourly rates are “adjusted annually on January 1 by an amount approved by the City Manager” under its 2005 amended contract, approves the City Manager’s agreement as to form.

Why a pay cut would cost more than a raise

Section 14.A of the agreement promises severance of twelve months’ salary and health coverage, plus one month for each year of service, capped at eighteen months — about $614,858 at today’s rate, plus eighteen months of health premiums. Section 14.B says that if the Council reduces his salary or benefits by more than an across-the-board reduction applied to all management employees, or asks him to resign, he may treat himself as terminated and collect the full amount.

Since January 11, 2022, removing him also requires four votes rather than three. The State’s post-Bell reforms (Government Code §§ 3511.1–3511.2, 53243–53243.4, 53260) cap severance at eighteen months and claw it back on a felony conviction; the agreement tracks them. Nothing in state law required the four-fifths rule, and nothing in the records explains why it was adopted the same night as the 6.6 percent raise.

The Council’s pay rose, too

The same schedule pages carry one more line: City Councilmember. It reads $2,015.83 a month on every schedule from 2017 through January 1, 2020, and $2,217.41 a month on the schedules effective January 1, 2021 and December 25, 2021 — an increase of 10.0 percent. State law allows a council to raise its own pay only by ordinance, by no more than 5 percent for each calendar year since the last raise, and not for any sitting member until after the next election (Government Code §§ 36516, 36516.5). Good Shepherd Media has asked the City Clerk for the ordinance. [[CLERK ANSWER / “The City had not identified the ordinance by publication.”]]

What the City says

Good Shepherd Media sent written questions to every Councilmember on October 19, with answers requested by October 30. None answered. A second letter went to all five, the City Attorney and the City Clerk on November 12, and a third — built on the City’s own records — on November 13, with answers requested by November 19 at 5:00 PM. Read receipts came back from Councilmember Gibbs (Oct. 19), Councilmember McLean (Nov. 13), Assistant City Manager Masis Hagobian (Oct. 19) and Communications Manager Carrie Lujan (Nov. 12). [[UPDATE AT PUBLICATION]]

[[FOR EACH: “Mayor Laurene Weste: did not respond.” / “Mayor Pro Tem Patsy Ayala: …” / “Councilmember Marsha McLean: …” / “Councilmember Jason Gibbs: …” / “Councilmember Bill Miranda: …” / “City Attorney Joseph Montes: …”]]

Mr. Striplin was sent ten written questions on November 12 through the City’s Communications Manager, with the same deadline. [[STRIPLIN RESPONSE IN FULL / “He did not respond.”]]

The City Clerk’s office responded to the records request on time, took the fourteen-day extension the law allows, produced thirty-seven records on November 12, and has committed to a further production by November 30. Good Shepherd Media notes that the City met its statutory deadlines. The records produced so far stop at January 11, 2022; the 2024, 2025 and 2026 increases, and the June resolutions that account for the unexplained rungs on the ladder, are still outstanding.

What the law requires

In a general-law city the council sets the city manager’s pay (Government Code §§ 36506, 34856). The law does not cap it. What the law does require is process: a brief general description of each item on a posted agenda (§ 54954.2); an oral summary of any executive pay action before the vote (§ 54953(c)(3)); a publicly available pay schedule, approved in open session, for every position including the city manager’s, so that CalPERS can treat the pay as pensionable (2 CCR § 570.5; Government Code § 20636); and an eighteen-month ceiling on severance (§ 53260). A council action taken in violation of the Brown Act’s agenda and oral-summary rules may be challenged within ninety days of the action, or within thirty days of discovery where the action was taken in closed session (§ 54960.1). The actions described here are, by date, beyond that window. The pattern is not.

Public money spent on salary is a trust. The Fiscal Impact section exists so that the people voting, and the people paying, know the number. In four reports over eight years, the number for this position was never written down.

Methodology: Hourly rates are taken from the Classification Plan and Salary Schedule attached to each resolution, read from the City’s PDFs; annual figures are hourly × 2,080. Percentages are computed from the schedule rates. Quotations from staff reports and minutes are verbatim. Where the City had not produced a record by publication, this report says so. Corrections: contact Good Shepherd Media through the reporter’s profile page linked above.

D. Collins — Investigative Reporter Good Shepherd Media Illegal Business • Local Crime • Police Responses & Public Safety • City Responses to Crime Santa Clarita, CA