Not only does Santa Clara pay its police the second-highest average salary in the state, it has also been offering its utility employees increasingly cushy salaries.
While Silicon Valley Power (SVP) only added 29 employees from 2015 to 2023, it doubled its payroll over the same period. This trend mirrors citywide spending.
In 2015, SVP paid its 178 employees $21.9 million in salary, according to Government Compensation in California. By 2023, that number had ballooned to $44.6 million. That year, SVP employed 207 people.
Adjusting for inflation, $22 million is equivalent to $28.2 million in 2023, according to the Consumer Price Index, provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Public salary figures from 2023 are the most recent available. Figures for how many employees SVP has added since 2023, and how much its total salaries have grown since then, are not yet publicly available.
However, SVP’s director, Manuel Pineda, has repeatedly emphasized to the Santa Clara City Council that the city’s public utility is growing at breakneck speed, saying it plans to double its load over the next decade.
Among that growth is a slew of data centers demanding an increasingly large amount of energy.
During SVP’s bi-annual update earlier this month, Pineda told the council that SVP has added another 12 employees in 2024 and 24 employees in the previous two years, dating back to 2022.
Just using numbers from 2023, that means — conservatively — SVP salaries are outpacing inflation by nearly $17 million in less than a decade.
Taking a look at how much SVP is paying in overtime offers a bit of insight into the phenomenon.
In 2015, SVP was paying employees $3.2 million in overtime; by 2023, that number had climbed to $10.7 million.
Overtime pay has also caused total pay to swell, catapulting SVP employees to the top of the city’s salaries. Of the top 50 Santa Clara salaries in 2023, the city paid 29 of them to SVP employees, including the 12 highest.
SVP has 17 employees that, in 2023, earned $400,000 or more, topping out at $729.858. Rewinding to 2015, the top SVP employee earned just $327,919.
For comparison, nearby public utilities in Palo Alto and Alameda have no employees that earn that much.
Salaries do not include benefits.
Palo Alto, which, according to recent Census data, has a population of 65,000, paid $100,000 or more in benefits to 51 utility employees. On the other hand, Santa Clara, a city with a population of 132,000, paid that much to 37 employees. Alameda, a city of 78,000, had no employees in 2023 who earned $100,000 or more in benefits contributions.
One SVP employee, Steve Hance, listed in 2023 as a “temporary employee,” earned $228,685 in benefits while collecting just $162,373 in salary, according to Transparent California. Hance has since become SVP’s senior electric division manager, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Palo Alto’s power company employed 259 people in 2023 and still only paid $34.6 million in salaries. Meanwhile, Alameda employed 88 people the same year and paid a comparatively meager $11.3 million.
Given these figures, at an average of $215,654, Santa Clara pays its utility workers the highest salary among the three. This is roughly $82,000 per employee more than Palo Alto’s average of $133,590, and roughly $87,000 more than Alameda’s average of $128,409.
In addition to an average of $70,417 in benefits contributions, in 2023, Santa Clara shelled out $737,708 in “lump sum” payments and another $1.2 million in “other pay” to SVP employees.
Assuming SVP’s new employees only earn the average salary, adding 12 employees in 2024 means ratepayers will be on the hook for another $2.6 million in 2025. But given SVP’s explosion of top-tier salaries in recent years, that number is likely to be much higher.
Contact David Alexander at d.todd.alexander@gmail.com
Hi David,
Since my name was called out in your article I thought responding was appropriate. Numbers published in Transparent California, while factual, don’t tell the entire story. With regard to my benefits that you’ve cited they are predominately a payout of accumulated sick time over the course of a 28 year career with the City, along with vacation time. I retired from the City in December of 2022, but was reimbursed for this benefit in 2023. Most City’s in California have similar policies that allow employee’s to recognize the financial benefit associated with both accumulated sick and vacation time. Transparent California doesn’t distinguish these benefits from others and as you’ve noticed gives a distorted picture of benefits that an employee may receive. Without sufficiently researching the topic before publishing you’ve given the appearance that the City has somehow paid a gross amount in benefits that can’t be deserved or earned. Additionally, my Linked In profile clearly indicates I’ve been a Senior Electric Division Manager since 2014. Since retiring in 2022 I’ve been working under the same Title as a temporary employee.
Are Silicon Valley Employees paid well? “Yes”
Do the residents of Santa Clara benefit by having highly qualified City employees? “Yes, they receive some of the lowest electric rates in the State through dedicated staff always being concerned with affordability, safety and reliability”
While I can’t speak for the people in management or administrative positions,, I would like to add for context that union electricians in the Bay Area can pretty easily see 200,000 a year on their check, especially if they are willing to work the demanding hours that lineman are expected to work.
It’s pretty shocking to hear that the Palo Alto utility workers are paid under 150,000 per year. The Palo Alto workers would likely get a hefty raise if they joined the electrician’s union working only eight hours a day Monday through Friday.
I feel like there’s a point that should be made of Silicon Valley Power versus Palo Alto and Alameda.
Our power rates are 63% lower than comparable PG&E rates, compared to Palo Alto’s 54% and Alameda’s 34%.
It’s a weird fact and only possible because all of us are surrounded by the local monopoly on power that our neighboring municipalities are stuck with, but it shows a direct comparison on cost savings that is easy to work with.
We also host a whole lot more than either of those cities, having 50k more residents while we also have an enterprise fiber internet arm that connects some of the world’s highest-valued companies compared to Alameda’s failed system (sold to Comcast) and Palo Alto’s nascent resident/commercial project.
We also don’t pay our Silicon Valley Power employees, the rates do. The same rates that are lower than the other two municipalities, who don’t have the services we do, nor the population that we do.
Do I think we shouldn’t be paying that much overtime? Sure, but that means they’ve been working hard to provide us the cheapest high-quality power in the Bay.
Great that you put things in proper context. Often. facts are presented without context to drive headlines and a furore results. It is better for society to pay workers bit more if it results in lower costs for hundred of thousands of people. Why don’t we question absurd salaries for corporate executives who drive our prices higher so that they cna pay themselves more.
Mr. Hance,
If you want to give me further details, please feel free to send me an email. As I am sure you can understand, I need to confirm that you are indeed who you claim, especially if you are offering clarification about your benefits. I would love to hear more detail, but alas, I don’t think a public comments section of the article, where I am unable to verify the identity of the person to whom I am corresponding, is the place to do it.
My email address is at the bottom of the article. Feel free to write me, preferable from a city email, if you would like to discuss this further. Thanks for reading.
David, maybe if you did your effing job and actually reached out to people you were naming before publishing the article Steve Hance wouldn’t have to write in the comment section of this article. Do better. Lazy journalism at its finest.
exposing true corruption in government is good journalism
I work at a nursing home and make half the money that these people make. What do they do in government that is so great and life changing to make so much money? 10 years ago electric rate was low, same as today. What is so different to get so much money?
The fact that he’s asking the person who responded to verify themselves clearly shows a lack of proper research before publishing this article. I agree with “Good Citizen” — this is a prime example of lazy journalism. If he wants to rant, he should stick to platforms like Twitter or X. This article reveals nothing except the publisher’s lack of skill. It’s nothing more than clickbait.