TOLEDO, Ohio — Toledo City Council on Tuesday voted to raise the salary range for the city auditor to $90,000-131,000.
Council member George Sarantou said the salary was raised from its previous range of $80,000-114,000 in an effort to remain competitive with rising salaries nationwide and attract the best candidates.
"We have to be realistic," Sarantou said. "Yes, we have to be good stewards of the city finances. But we also have to be realistic about recruiting top-notch administrators."
Toledo's previous city auditor, Jake Jaksetic, was fired in a 7-4 vote by council in late November.
Council, which oversees the auditor, has since been trying to fill the position.
Jaksetic's job performance had been repeatedly criticized by Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz after council voted to suspend him from the auditor position on Nov. 1 for unspecified reasons.
Kapszukiewicz claimed Jaksetic had not completed an audit since he was hired in 2014.
The two also butted heads in the summer of 2022 when Jaksetic and council member Katie Moline said boxes of tax documents with residents' personal information had been left in an unsecured location in One Government Center.
Council also approved a $100,000 settlement on Tuesday in a longstanding gender discrimination lawsuit against the city from now-retired Toledo Fire & Rescue Cpt. Carla Stachura.
Stachura, along with two other former TFRD employees, sued the city and former TFRD leaders. The lawsuit went to trial in 2019, where Stachura's claims were denied by jurors and she appealed the decision.
Her case was set to back to trial in March, but the settlement was reached and the appeal was dropped.