WALNUT CREEK, CA — The Walnut Creek City Council just voted to give itself a raise. Unanimously, naturally.
More than double, if you’re keeping score. On Tuesday night, the five members voted to bump their own pay from $650 to $1,600 a month — the first change in compensation since 2002. That’s a 24-year stretch, which in Walnut Creek years is roughly two Broadway Plaza remodels and one very long argument about downtown parking.
Here’s the history, because it matters. Council pay went from $263 to $500 a month in 1985. Then $500 to $650 in 2002. Then nothing, for more than two decades, while the cost of everything else in town kept doing what it does.
The raise doesn’t kick in until December, after the November municipal election seats the next council. So nobody who voted for it collects an extra dollar this term. Hang onto that detail.
The chambers were quiet about it, too — no raised voices, no public pushback. The dais stayed calm, the flags stayed put, and the motion carried without anyone speaking against it.
Mayor Kevin Wilk, who got the gavel from his colleagues this year, put it plainly: people are shocked at how little the council makes. He figures the job runs 80 hours a month or more, especially for the mayor, who gets tapped for every ribbon-cutting and community mixer in town.
“Nobody’s getting rich being on City Council, but council members shouldn’t have to lose money or be in the red every month.”
— Mayor Kevin Wilk
Councilmember Cindy Darling pointed at daycare. “Not having enough money to cover daycare is a big barrier for parents with school-age kids,” she said. Fair point. $650 a month doesn’t cover much childcare anywhere in the East Bay.
⭐ The Numbers
- Old pay: $650 a month
- New pay: $1,600 a month (more than double)
- Vote: 5–0, unanimous
- Last change: 2002
- Takes effect: December 2026, after the November election
- How it compares: Concord, Pittsburg and Antioch pay $1,900 a month; Lafayette and Orinda pay $0
For context, Concord, Pittsburg, and Antioch pay their council members $1,900 a month. Lafayette and Orinda pay nothing. At $1,600, Walnut Creek now sits in the comfortable middle — which is, when you think about it, a very Walnut Creek place to sit.
The raise rides on SB 329, the 2023 state law that lets cities adjust council pay to keep pace with inflation and the years since the last adjustment. Walnut Creek simply hadn’t used it until now. Wilk framed it as a down payment on the future: “We’ve done something for the future of Walnut Creek and to help people to run where they might not have been able to before.”
Look, $1,600 a month to help run a city of 70,000 isn’t a fortune. But watching elected officials vote on their own paycheck always carries a little sting, no matter how clean the math. The counter is just as true: nobody should have to go broke to serve. For now, the number’s been set, and the check is somebody else’s problem until December.
Speaking of money and downtown, the council also recently cleared an 8-story, 104-home housing project on Mt. Diablo. And here’s what else is happening around town.
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