Like mayor, Elk Grove Village trustees will now get raises based on longevity

Elk Grove Village’s mayor and trustees are in line for raises — some, more than others — following local elections next year.

Mayor Craig Johnson, one of the longest-tenured elected officials in the suburbs, is due to receive a 21% raise, from $40,000 to $48,545, under a new pay scale he and village trustees recently approved.

The current pay schedule has gone unchanged since 2008, when village board members agreed to replace a blanket annual salary for the mayor with a sliding scale based on longevity.

The latest pay rates will also award trustees for longevity.

Annual escalators of 3% are built in, so a newly elected trustee would make $8,000 and top out at $25,000 after 40 years.

The changes take effect May 1, 2027.

For the longest-serving trustee, Jeff Franke, that means pay will at least double, from $6,000 to $14,028. He has been on the board since 2007.

The newest trustee, Keith Lasken, will get a slightly smaller raise, from $6,000 to $8,240. He was elected in 2025.

Johnson, elected in 1997, is in the middle of his eighth four-year term. He had topped out at $40,000 under the existing pay schedule when he began his sixth term in 2017.

The new cap is $65,000 — should he complete a 10th term.

“I don’t picture that happening,” Johnson told the Daily Herald Wednesday.

Johnson defended the pay raises amid increasing inflation and expenses, noting that Elk Grove Village officials don’t get car allowances, mileage reimbursements, or extra per-meeting pay, as some other municipal leaders do.

“We basically cover things with what we make,” he said. “We made it simple. It’s just a flat amount.”

He framed starting pay — $20,000 for the mayor’s office and $8,000 for trustees — as “on the low end” relative to peers. In Arlington Heights, for instance, he noted board members recently agreed to boost salaries to $33,000 for the mayor and $11,000 for trustees, beginning in 2029.

As to the longevity scale, Johnson contends, “Experience matters.”

“You reward some experience, like the real world is. First day of a new job you don’t get paid the same as someone who’s been there 20 years,” he said.

Donato Latrofa, a zoning board of appeals member who has announced his candidacy for village board, criticized the current board for a lack of transparency since the raises were quietly approved on the board’s Sept. 8 consent agenda. Specifics of the pay bumps aren’t in the published board packet, Latrofa noted.

If elected next April, Latrofa vowed to donate the extra $2,000 he’d get as a new trustee.

“Structural changes of this magnitude warrant sufficient notice to the community, opportunities to debate, and direct public input — not quiet tweaks hidden in off-the-record conversations, omitted from any agenda, and then ratified by a quick consent vote,” he wrote on his campaign blog.

cplacek@dailyherald.com