FITCHBURG — Mayor Sam Squailia has vetoed a recent City Council order which would have given the city clerk a salary increase.
“I vetoed City Council Order 103-26, which would give only the City Clerk position a special pay increase, outside of the normal salary process used for other department heads.
This veto is not about one employee. It is about fairness. It is about consistency. It is about fiscal responsibility with taxpayer dollars. That is the duty that I uphold to the taxpayers of this city,” Squailia said in a Facebook post.
City Clerk Joanna Bilotta-Simeone makes $109,936 according to 2025 city records, but City Council President Anthony Zarrella said the council had approved a raise for her, because “The current salary is far out of step with her peers,” which he said is much higher for the same position in similarly sized cities, such as Leominster, as well as compared to other department heads for Fitchburg.
“If you look at other department heads, the city clerk falls far below them, despite doing as much work,” Zarrella said.
“Councilors have described this as a contractual increase, or suggested the position has not received raises for years,” said Squailia. “That is false. This position has received the standard salary increases, with additional raises given as “exceptions” during the prior mayoral administration. What the Council voted for here was another “exception” above the normal process. For months, we have been talking about a tight city budget. I have made $3.1 million in responsible budget cuts this year. Those were not easy cuts. Fitchburg has many needs, and we simply cannot afford every want.
“We have asked departments to tighten their budgets. We have asked employees and unions to accept restraint, including 0% COLA increases over the past two years. We have held off on updating the full non-union and department head salary matrix because other union contracts are still being negotiated, and because the city remains in a difficult financial position.
“So we cannot turn around and make a one-off salary adjustment for one position, outside of a full review, and pretend that does not create a problem. Because it does.
It sends the wrong message to every other employee who has been told to wait. This council vote alone, has created morale problems. It has created bargaining problems… and if it passes my veto, it creates fairness problems and weakens the city’s credibility when we are asking everyone else to live within a difficult budget. The public has asked for fiscal responsibility, and that is what I am standing up for right now.”
Zarrella said he thinks the council has enough votes to override Squailia’s veto, but he’s not 100 percent sure. “We’ll find out in the next two weeks,” he said.
He said he would be open to reviewing all salaries across the board, but he said that would be something that typically the mayor would undertake, and then the council would review it.
But he said, with the city clerk having a lower salary than her peers, the council thought it was time to rectify that and give her a raise. “If we wait on that, it’s never going to happen,” he said. “Basically, I thought something needed to be done. The position is traditionally underfunded in Fitchburg.”
“Councilors have directed that it is the mayor’s job to make the tough decisions. I agree. That is what I do every day, and that is what I am doing right now,” said Squailia. “Making the tough decisions does not only mean cutting budgets. It also means saying no to isolated and arbitrary spending decisions by this council. Fiscal restraint must be exercised across the board. By giving arbitrary raises, the damaging message sent is that the city has money when it is politically convenient, and that makes responsible negotiations with all our other employees much harder for my administration. … Picking one position at a time for a raise is not good policy. Fitchburg employees deserve fairness, clarity, and consistency. And Fitchburg taxpayers deserve fiscal discipline that applies evenly across the board.”