Editor’s note: With town leaders warning of a “fiscal cliff,” an $8.6 million budget deficit and more than 50 municipal layoffs, voters will likely be asked to approve Marblehead’s first general override in a generation. Given that, the Current is launching a series, “Overriding Considerations,” to examine various aspects of the town’s finances. This is part one, on municipal employees’ salaries.
Marblehead spent $65.24 million on employee compensation in 2025, according to town payroll records, with schools and public safety accounting for the largest shares of spending across 1,185 municipal employees.
The data shows wide variation in how payroll dollars are distributed across departments, reflecting differences in staffing size, job functions and labor contracts. While public safety drives most of the town’s overtime spending, the bulk of overall payroll is concentrated in the school system, which employs more than half the town’s municipal workforce.
The highest-paid employees were largely in public safety, with seven of the 10 top earners working in the Police Department, according to the payroll data. The remaining top earners included senior administrators and supervisory roles, whose total compensation reflected higher base salaries rather than overtime.
Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer said payroll figures reflect a formal classification system rather than discretionary pay decisions.
“For every position, there are job descriptions that lay out the scope of responsibility, supervision, educational requirements — sort of all the criteria,” Kezer said. “That is then used through an evaluation process … provided to us by HR consultants to score each of the positions as to what pay grade they belong to.”
He said union contracts, step increases tied to experience and job classifications determine how salaries progress, with pay grades reviewed through the town’s compensation committee.
While police officers dominated the top of the earnings list by total pay, administrative and management categories reported the highest average pay per employee overall, though those categories account for a small number of positions townwide.
Across all departments, the average total pay was $55,056, with a median of $46,053. Townwide overtime totaled about $3.22 million, or 4.9% of total payroll.
Schools account for the largest share of payroll
By total payroll, the town’s largest departments are in the school system, amounting to about $39 million, or over half of the town’s total payroll. Of that amount, roughly $1.7 million was paid through school revolving and grant funds.
Marblehead High School alone accounted for $9.6 million in payroll across 147 employees. Village School and Brown School followed with $6.47 million and $5.42 million, respectively.
Most school departments reported little to no overtime, with the exception of school custodial, maintenance and transportation staff, where overtime totaled about $330,000 across 39 employees.
Public safety departments, by contrast, employ far fewer people but account for some of the highest individual compensation figures.
A ‘perfect storm’ at the Fire Department
The Fire Department, which employs 42 people, paid roughly $1.63 million in overtime last year, accounting for about 31% of its $5.27 million total payroll. On average, overtime added nearly $39,000 per employee, with 10 staff members earning more in overtime than in base pay.
Fire Chief Jason Gilliland said the department’s overtime levels reflect staffing pressures rather than discretionary scheduling.
“None of it’s voluntary,” Gilliland told the Current. “With four firefighters out with cancer, two firefighters out on military leave and normal vacation time, every single day I am below the minimum (staffing levels), and I’m forced to hire somebody or order somebody.”
He said the department is required to maintain a minimum of nine firefighters on each shift. When staffing falls below that level due to illness, military leave or other absences, the department uses overtime to meet safety requirements.
“I have an obligation as the chief of the department to make sure that staffing is at a safe level not only for the firefighters but for the town,” he said.
Gilliland described the current situation as “the perfect storm,” noting that the department has also lost four firefighter positions over the past three budget cycles and is currently operating with fewer on-duty staff as a result.
He said many of the factors driving overtime are outside his control, but restoring the four eliminated positions, if approved by voters, could help ease the overtime burden.
“Would it be nice to have the four positions back? Yeah, that may help things,” he said. “But overtime, because of contractual obligations of vacation, sick time and holiday time, is always going to be an issue with the fire department.”
Gilliland said the department has stayed within its overtime budget despite the pressures.
“We’ve never gone over budget — not once,” he said. “As a matter of fact, we usually give back money at the end of the year.”
Overtime, he said, is “just the cost of doing business,” particularly when combined with mutual aid responses to neighboring communities and the need to backfill positions when firefighters are sent out of town.
Kezer said overtime in public safety is built into the town’s budgeting assumptions because of how shift-based staffing works.
A study he conducted in Amesbury found that typical vacation and sick time meant a firefighter was available for about 85% of scheduled shifts in a given year.
While the town budgets for what he described as “normal overtime” tied to those routine absences, longer-term injuries and military leave can significantly increase costs.
“It is the extended absences for various reasons that have the most profound impact,” Kezer said.
He said the town weighs whether to add positions or rely on overtime by calculating the full cost of hiring additional firefighters, including salary, stipends and the town’s share of health insurance.
“You have to do that calculation as to what is the full cost to add those positions … as compared to taking an existing firefighter, where you’re already covering those costs, and paying them at an overtime rate,” he said. “It’s close enough to be a wash.”
A closer look at police pay
The Police Department recorded about $6.67 million in total compensation for 73 employees, including emergency dispatchers. Overtime totaled roughly $565,000, or about 8.5% of department payroll, while more than $2 million was categorized as “other” compensation, according to the payroll data.
Two of the seven police officers among the town’s highest-paid employees had “other” compensation that nearly doubled their base salary.
Police Chief Dennis King said that category includes paid details and other work performed outside regular shifts.
“The people that are making the highest end are almost working double the amount of what a normal person works, almost like they have a second job,” King said.
He said paid details, such as traffic control for construction projects and utility work, make up a significant share of some officers’ total earnings, but said most of that money does not come from taxpayers.
“I would estimate that $1 million to $1.1 million is likely what we had in the calendar year” for details, King said, adding that “about 95% of our details are private and about 5% are town details.”
Because detail pay flows through the town’s payroll system, it appears alongside regular wages in the data, even when the cost is reimbursed by private parties.
King said police overtime levels have remained relatively consistent in recent years and are driven primarily by minimum staffing requirements, training mandates and community events. He said most overtime is funded through the operating budget, with roughly $50,000 coming from outside grants.
“The majority of what the overtime comes from is staffing,” he said. “When the shifts go below the minimum, we have to hire.”
King said Marblehead operates with lean staffing relative to its population, with 31 officers serving a town of about 20,000 residents — roughly 1.5 officers per 1,000 people, which he said is about half the national average.
He said adding officers could reduce overtime at a certain point but said the department is not currently at that threshold.
“There’s a breaking point where … it will cost more to pay overtime than to (hire),” he said. “We’re not at that point.”
King said payroll figures can be misleading without context.
“There are hours behind every one of that extra dollar that you see … that are being worked by officers at the sacrifice of their free time,” he said. “Nobody is giving them money they didn’t earn.”
Beyond schools and public safety
Outside of schools and public safety, payroll data show a wide range of department sizes and compensation levels across town operations, including public works, water and sewer, waste collection and administrative offices.
Utilities and public works departments account for a smaller share of total payroll than schools or public safety but employ crews responsible for core town services.
Payroll growth and competitiveness
Kezer said the town has negotiated new collective bargaining agreements in recent years, with union contracts averaging about 3% cost growth and non-union pay increasing about 2%.
“Obviously, that’s going to increase our salary costs,” he said, adding that the town must also remain competitive to recruit and retain employees.
A consulting firm reviewing pay scales outside public safety found some Marblehead positions lag behind comparable communities.
“In the analysis, we’re behind,” he said. “We need to make adjustments to our pay scales to stay in the marketplace.
At the same time, we’re faced with a pretty significant budget challenge.”
Kezer said public perception of payroll growth can overlook longer-term staffing shifts.
“There have been reductions in overall staffing over the years,” he said, noting that some newer roles were created by reallocating resources or phasing out outdated positions rather than expanding the overall budget.
He said the town is also investing in technology to reduce administrative workload over time.
“We’re trying to transform the organization where the software does the processing and the people are managing and doing the quality control,” he said. “Ultimately, we won’t need as many people for processing.”
Kezer said the town is working to improve how payroll data are presented publicly to avoid misinterpretation.
“We want to make that information available and transparent,” he said, adding that the goal is to ensure salary reports “accurately represent what is going on.”
Regarding the numbers
Payroll totals reflect total compensation paid over the calendar year, including overtime and other forms of pay in addition to base salary. The data capture what was paid, not how many hours employees worked or which portions were reimbursed by outside parties.
Earnings of department heads, senior officials
Marblehead department heads and senior officials earned the following amounts in 2025:
Light Department General Manager Joseph Kowalik, $403,989*
Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer, $219,951
School Superintendent John Robidoux, $216,750
Police Chief Dennis King, $191,632
Finance Director Aleesha Nunley Benjamin, $166,759
Health Director Andrew Petty, $159,987
Fire Chief Jason Gilliland, $156,183
Building Commissioner Stephen Cummings, $130,027
Harbormaster Mark Souza, $118,445
Assistant Assessor Todd Laramie, $118,027
HR Director Thomas Howard, $118,027
Water and Sewer Superintendent Amy McHugh, $117,847
Superintendent of Parks Peter James, $117,549
Council on Aging Director Lisa Hooper, $117,149
Library Director Kimberly Grad, $115,616
Town Engineer Maggie Wheeler, $114,125
Cemetery Superintendent Catherine Kobialka, $112,709
Director of Community Planning and Development Brendan Callahan, $110,931
Superintendent of Recreation Jaime Bloch, $101,822
Town Clerk Robin Michaud, $97,905
Town Planner Alex Eitler, $90,418
Sustainability Coordinator Logan Casey, $78,885
Veterans Agent Roseann Trionfi-Mazzuchelli, $77,421
*Amount includes a retention bonus approved by Marblehead Municipal Light Commission after deciding not to renew Kowalik’s contract. The compensation package included a $150,000 retention bonus and potential performance bonuses totaling an additional $50,000.
How we’re reporting municipal pay data / Editor Leigh Blander
Each year, the town of Marblehead releases salary information for municipal employees, including police officers, firefighters, teachers and other town workers. This information is public under Massachusetts law and is intended to give residents transparency into how public funds are spent.
At the same time, most municipal employees are not public figures. They are local residents or neighbors who work under schedules, staffing levels and labor contracts largely set by policy decisions beyond their individual control.
With that in mind, the Marblehead Current adopted the following approach in reporting 2025 municipal compensation data:
— We focus on systems, not individuals.
Our reporting emphasizes department-wide trends, staffing levels and budget impacts rather than singling out rank-and-file employees.
— We name senior officials and decision-makers.
Department heads and senior officials are named because they play a role in staffing, scheduling and policy choices.
— We rely on aggregation wherever possible.
Most employee pay is reported in totals, medians, ranges and distributions rather than as individual listings.
— We name individuals only when there is a clear public-interest reason.
This includes extreme outliers that illustrate broader policy or budget issues — not simply high earnings alone.
— We explain how pay works before presenting figures.
Overtime, paid details, longevity pay and specialty compensation are governed by collective bargaining agreements and state law. High earnings do not necessarily indicate misuse or wrongdoing.
— We avoid implying misconduct without evidence.
Compensation figures reflect staffing levels, contractual rules and operational needs, not individual behavior in isolation. Our goal is to provide residents with a clear, fair picture of how municipal compensation works in Marblehead — and what it says about staffing, budgets and town services — while treating town employees with respect.
