KEY WEST, Fla. — Brian Barroso is the highest-paid public administrator in the Florida Keys (in terms of base pay) and is compensated at a level on par with senior administrators in some of Florida’s largest cities, despite overseeing a city of 5.6 square miles with 402 employees.
Barroso’s $265,000 base salary works out to about $339,000 in all-wrapped compensation when the city’s cost of benefits and other contract expenses are included. He reached that level after less than two years into his first job as a City Manager after a career spent primarily in banking.
Not bad work if you can get it.
The clearest comparison begins close to home. Barroso’s base salary exceeds those of Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay, County Administrator Christine Hurley and Schools Superintendent Ed Tierney.
Ramsay earns $218,715 while leading a countywide law-enforcement agency with more than 500 employees and nearly four decades of law-enforcement experience. Hurley earns about $205,000 while overseeing roughly 630 county employees. Tierney earns $199,500 while leading a school system with about 1,403 employees.
Those countywide agencies operate across Monroe County’s 983 square miles of land and a chain of islands extending more than 100 miles. By comparison, Key West’s land area is 5.6 square miles.
Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority Executive Director Greg Veliz earns about $250,000 in base salary while overseeing approximately 319 employees and a water system extending roughly 130 miles through the island chain. Veliz also brought more than two decades of local-government experience to the job.
The local comparison does not establish that every agency chief performs the same work or carries identical legal responsibilities. A Sheriff, County Administrator, Superintendent and utility executive answer to different governing structures and face different operational risks.
It does establish that Barroso’s salary sits at the top of a group whose other members generally oversee larger territories, more employees or both — and entered their jobs with substantially more public-sector experience.
The difference is even clearer when salary is allocated across local tax-paying households. Using the Census Bureau’s 2020-24 estimates of 10,775 Key West households and 34,405 Monroe County households, Barroso’s base salary equals about $24.59 per Key West household, rising to approximately $31.46 per household on an all-wrapped basis.
Ramsay’s compensation equals about $6.36 per county household in base salary and an estimated $8.84 to $10.93 all-wrapped. Hurley’s equals about $5.96 in base salary and $9.59 all-wrapped. Tierney’s equals about $5.80 in base salary and $7.70 all-wrapped. Veliz’s compensation equals approximately $7.27 in base salary and $10.17 all-wrapped per Monroe County household served by the Keys water system.
These are comparative household allocations, not estimates of anyone’s actual tax or utility bill. Naval Air Station Key West is federally funded, so its local household cost is listed as not applicable.
The same pattern appears in a screen of smaller Florida coastal communities confronting many of the pressures Key West faces, including tourism-dependent economies, workforce-housing shortages, hurricanes, flooding, climate change and sea-level rise.
Key West’s $265,000 base salary exceeded the reported City Manager salaries in Marco Island, Fernandina Beach, Stuart, Punta Gorda, New Smyrna Beach, Fort Pierce, Lake Worth Beach, Tarpon Springs, Sebastian, Flagler Beach, Daytona Beach Shores and Gulf Breeze.
Among the screened coastal peers, only Oakland Park at $301,000 and Naples at $294,354 paid higher base salaries.
Using the benefit assumptions available for the peer group, Key West’s approximately $339,000 all-wrapped compensation ranked third, behind Naples at approximately $354,557 and Oakland Park at approximately $349,043.
The comparison becomes even more striking when the lens widens to some of Florida’s largest cities.
Jacksonville Chief Administrative Officer Michael Weinstein earns $271,855, just $6,855 more than Barroso. Jacksonville’s adopted fiscal 2025-26 budget authorizes 8,199 employees across a consolidated city-county government covering 747.3 square miles. That is about 20 times Key West’s workforce and 133 times its land area.
Barroso also earns about $9,065 more than Tampa Chief of Staff John Bennett, whose official fiscal 2025 position schedule lists a salary of $255,934.65. The same city schedule contains 5,078 positions, nearly 13 times the number of employees on Key West’s citywide distribution, across 114 square miles — about 20 times Key West’s land area.
Orlando Chief Administrative Officer F.J. Flynn was paid $320,222 in 2025. Published payroll records list 5,525 Orlando employees, nearly 14 times Key West’s workforce, serving a city covering 110.6 square miles.
Miami City Manager Art Noriega, the clear salary outlier, was reported at approximately $525,000 while overseeing 5,031 employees, according to the City Manager’s Office.
The large-city comparison is not exact because the offices are structured differently. Barroso is Key West’s chief executive under a commission-manager system. Miami also employs a City Manager, while the Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville officials are senior administrators serving beneath Mayors who exercise executive authority. Jacksonville is also a consolidated city-county government.
Those differences in charter authority and responsibility matter, but they do not erase the enormous disparities in workforce and geographic scope.
The salary question is taking on added weight because Barroso is positioned to receive another increase while seeking to reduce the city workforce.
If his contract renews automatically in January, a 5% increase would add $13,250 to his base salary, raising it to $278,250.
At the same time, Barroso is seeking to eliminate 15 city jobs — about 3.7% of the 402-person workforce used for the citywide employee communication — a move that has put him at odds with Commissioners who have said they do not want city employees dismissed.
The City Commission this week failed 3-4 to approve a resolution reserving its right to modify or terminate Barroso’s contract before the renewal window closed.
Commissioners Chris Massicotte and Monica Haskell joined Mayor Sam Kaufman in supporting the resolution. Vice Mayor Donie Lee and Commissioners Aaron Castillo, Lissette Carey and Mark Rossi opposed it.
Numbers do not lie. In this case, they tell the story of why Thursday’s vote mattered.
Several sheep-like Commissioners (Carey, Castillo, Lee and Rossi) allowed themselves to be cowed by a fundamentally flawed legal opinion from part-time City Attorney Mayanne Downs.
Her reading was not supported by the 2004 Fifth District Court of Appeal ruling examined in this publication’s earlier analysis, which distinguished a government’s notice that preserves its contractual options from a final decision to terminate an agreement.
The Fifth District decision directly undercuts Downs’ suggestion that preserving a contractual right necessarily amounts to exercising it.
The people of Key West deserve to get what they pay for. They also deserved an honest opportunity to revisit Barroso’s contract before another two-year term and automatic raise took effect — without a contractual gun being held to their heads.
Salary alone cannot measure a City Manager’s performance, and a small island city can present complexities that raw population and acreage do not capture. Key West manages a globally recognized tourism economy, aging infrastructure, severe housing pressure, hurricane exposure and mounting climate-adaptation costs.
But scale remains relevant when elected officials set executive compensation.
On the numbers, Key West is paying Barroso at a level comparable to senior administrators with decades of municipal experience who are responsible for thousands more employees and, in Jacksonville’s case, hundreds more square miles — while preparing to pay him more to run a workforce that will become smaller because of him.
Methodology: Salary figures are base or reported annual pay unless identified as estimated all-wrapped compensation. Workforce figures are official authorized positions or published agency totals where available. Key West’s figure is the 402-person citywide employee distribution used by Barroso. Employee definitions vary among governments. Land-area figures are from the 2020 U.S. Census Gazetteer. Household allocations divide salary by Census Bureau 2020-24 household estimates and serve only as a common taxpayer proxy; they are not estimates of actual tax or utility bills. Officials whose current salary or workforce could not be verified were excluded.
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Great reporting and analysis! Some of our commissioners were boondoggled!
Good reporting.