Which Metro Nashville employees earn the most? A look at the top 10 base salaries in 2024

wdc tv news staff December 19, 2024

16 3 minutes read

The Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County employs nearly 11,000 people — closer to 20,000 when including Metro Nashville Public Schools staff, who are also technically classified as Metro employees.

The top 10 highest earners among them received a combined $3.2 million from their base salaries this year, according to records readily available on the city’s open data portal.

Here’s a list of the highest base salaries among all Metro employees in 2024, compiled from the city’s data set of general government employee titles and base annual salaries last updated in October:

$317,824 – Water Services Director Scott Potter
$295,825 – Chief Medical Director Gill Wright III
$287,260 – Police Chief John Drake
$272,909 – Transportation Director Diana Alarcon
$269,750 – Chief Development Officer Robert Mendes
$265,561 – Fire Chief William Swann
$265,494 – Director of Development/Special Projects Mark Sturtevant
$265,336 – Finance Director Kevin Crumbo
$264,020 – Metro Action Commission Executive Director Cynthia Croom
$260,228 – Planning Executive Director Lucy Kempf

Nashville mayor Freddie O'Connell lands at 63 on the list, earning a salary of $209,898.

MNPS employees aren’t included on that list, but they are listed in another data set available on the open data portal. That’s the list of Metro government employee earnings — including not just base salaries but also bonuses, payouts and other forms of compensation — by fiscal year.

That data was last updated in July and the most recent figures are for the 2024 fiscal year, meaning those numbers are outdated by about six months comparatively. However, that doesn’t stop MNPS Director Adrienne Battle from finishing comfortably in second on the above list with a base salary of $307,754 — or even topping the list based on her total compensation of $326,538.

Six of the top 10 earners on the fiscal year 2024 list are not department heads but instead sergeants or lieutenants with the Metro Nashville Police Department. That’s due in large part to each of them earning a significant amount of overtime pay, anywhere from about $48,000 to nearly $62,000.

How does Nashville compare to other regional cities?

The Tennessean also sought out the top salary data for a few other cities in the region for the sake of comparison. One of them was Raleigh, North Carolina. Raleigh was selected using the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s Peer City Identification Tool, a data comparison and visualization tool intended to help policymakers understand a municipality as it compares to “peer cities” based on categories like a city’s racial and socioeconomic composition, demographics and economic future, housing affordability and more.

The Tennessean obtained salary data for Raleigh through an open records request. Here’s the list of the top 10 base salaries in 2024:

$363,502.75 – City Manager Marchell David
$278,000 – City Attorney Karen McDonald
$239,827.50 – Police Chief Estella Patterson
$228,031.20 – Assistant City Manager Michael Moore
$225,595.01 – Senior Deputy City Attorney James Poole
$224,864.10 – Assistant City Manager Evan Raleigh
$221,697 – Fire Chief Herbert Griffin
$217,812.52 – Senior Deputy City Attorney Dorothy Kibler
$216,000 – Assistant City Manager Ryan Bergman
$209,435.11 – Deputy City Attorney Hunt Choi

That group combined to earn roughly $2.4 million, about $800,000 less than the top 10 earners in Nashville.

The Tennessean also sought out salary information about fellow Sun Belt cities like Tampa, Florida. Like Nashville, the open data Tampa publishes online includes salary information. This list of top earners is based on the salary schedule included with the city’s budget for the 2025 fiscal year:

$256,246 – Administrator of Infrastructure and Mobility Jean Duncan
$256,202 – Chief Financial Officer Dennis Rogero
$255,980 – Police Chief Lee Bercaw
$255,934 – Administrator of Neighborhood and Community Affairs Ocea Wynn
$255,934 – Chief of Staff John Bennett
$253,978 – Administrator for Development and Economic Opportunity Abbye Feeley
$249,010 – City Attorney Andrea Zelman
$233,741 – Fire Chief Barbara Tripp
$223,676 – Deputy City Attorney (the city has two deputy city attorneys, Cate Wells and Morris Massey, but the budget doesn't specify who earns this amount)
$222,017 – Deputy Administrator of Infrastructure and Mobility Brad Baird

The budget also lists two other positions that would crack the top 10 ahead of Baird: a deputy administrator for neighborhood and community affairs position earning a $223,961 salary, and a deputy administrator for development and economic opportunity earning a $222,564 salary. However, it doesn't appear that anyone is currently serving in either position based on staff information available on the city's website.

These 10 salaries combined add up to $2,462,718, a similar amount to Raleigh.

The Austin American-Statesman also compiled salary information about the highest-paid officials in Sun Belt counterpart Austin, Texas, earlier this year:

$475,009 – Austin Energy General Manager Bob Kahn
470,017 – City Manager T.C. Broadnax
$425,006 – Airport CEO Ghizlane Badawi
$376,001 – Airport Chief Development Officer Shane Harbinson
$325,000 – Deputy City Manager Jon Fortune
$322,400 – Austin Energy deputy general manager of business Stuart Reilly
$317,220 – Austin Energy executives Kerry Overton, Lisa Martin and Tammy Cooper
$315,078 – Chief Medical Officer Mark Escott
$298,500 – Assistant city managers Robert Goode, Veronica Briseño and Stephanie Hayden-Howard
$298,493 – Interim Assistant City Manager Bruce Mills (retired in August and replaced by Eddie García)