Graham council gives city manager 12 percent raise after closed session

Graham’s City Council spent nearly two hours behind closed doors on June 11 before returning to open session and approving a 12 percent raise for City Manager Megan Garner, a move that put her salary at $230,720 and drew a lone dissent from Mayor Chelsea Dickey. The vote came after 1 hour and 52 minutes in executive session, where a possible discussion of the Graham-Mebane lawsuit had been removed from the agenda, leaving only an unspecified personnel matter.

Council member Bonnie Whitaker made the motion to raise Garner’s pay from $206,000. The measure passed 4-1, with Dickey voting no. Dickey said Garner’s compensation already fell in the appropriate range for a city of Graham’s size, based on a salary chart the council appeared to review while closed.

The increase does not end there. Garner is also eligible for the 3 percent cost-of-living adjustment built into the city budget for all employees, which would push her annual salary to about $237,642 effective July 1. That means Garner’s pay will rise again on top of the council’s action, just as Graham’s broader fiscal picture includes a 3-cent property tax increase and a budget that passed 3-2 earlier the same night.

Graham operates under a council-manager form of government, with the city manager serving as the city’s chief executive officer and the mayor and council making policy and personnel decisions at the top level. That structure gives added weight to how the council handles Garner’s review, and it makes the closed-session process especially important to public trust. The city’s FY 2025-26 budget totals $22,750,562 for the general fund and $13,093,600 for water and sewer, while also setting aside $84,649,290 for the wastewater treatment plant upgrade, a spending plan that underscores the scale of the decisions now facing city leaders.

The June vote also reflects a pattern. In April 2025, the council raised Garner’s salary to $200,000 from $176,563.70 after a 2 1/2-hour closed session devoted to her review. Garner was hired in October 2021 and began service in November 2021 at $120,000. Two major pay increases in a little over a year place her compensation higher on Graham’s local pay scale and raise the stakes for how often senior pay decisions are handled out of public view.

Those questions land as Graham is also locked in a separate financial fight with Mebane over the wastewater treatment plant expansion. Mebane agreed in May 2026 to pay Graham $9,310,976 toward the project, with payments beginning in the 2026-27 fiscal year and rights reserved so litigation can continue. The agreement followed Mebane’s December 2025 lawsuit disputing Graham’s claim that a 2017 agreement required Mebane to pay $18.1 million, or 21.43 percent, of the $84.6 million upgrade. Graham says the plant expansion would raise treatment capacity from 3.5 million to 5 million gallons per day, leaving city leaders to navigate personnel pay, taxes and a major utility dispute at the same time.