Marblehead's $65.2M payroll: What the town paid 1,185 workers in FY2025

Get our free local reporting delivered straight to your inbox. No noise, no spam — just clear, independent coverage of Marblehead. Sign up for our once-a-week newsletter.

Marblehead paid 1,185 municipal employees $65.2 million in 2025, a workforce spanning teachers and police officers, highway crews and harbormaster assistants, cemetery workers and the town administrator. Those salaries and wages represent just over half of the town's $128 million operating budget adopted by Town Meeting in 2025.

Regular pay sets the baseline

The compensation records show salaries that look predictable on the surface: teachers cluster around $100,000, department heads exceed $150,000 and the municipal light department general manager tops everyone at $404,000 in total compensation. But beneath those base figures runs a parallel economy of overtime and supplemental payments that tells a different story about how the town actually operates. Some departments barely touch overtime budgets. Others depend on it, especially public safety.

If this payroll breakdown helped you understand where town dollars go, consider supporting the work that made it possible. This story required public records requests, data cleaning, coding and careful formatting — and it’s free to read because 88 neighbors already pay on an annual and monthly basis to keep The Independent going. We’re aiming for 100 members before Jan. 31 to steady support and keep producing this kind of reporting.  Click here to become an Independent member.

The top salaries look conventional when measured strictly by regular pay. A small group of positions sits well above the rest of the workforce, led by the municipal light department's general manager. The town administrator and school superintendent also rank near the top on base pay, with public safety command staff and senior finance roles close behind.

Those base salaries describe what Marblehead budgets for positions. The town's payroll record shows how the work actually gets covered.

Overtime and 'other' pay reveal how the town runs

The total reveals itself in the numbers: $56.9 million in regular salary, $5.1 million in payments classified only as "other" and $3.2 million in overtime. The data does not explain what qualifies as "other" payments or how those differ from overtime or base salary.

In Massachusetts, police and fire departments run 24-hour operations that still must be staffed when someone is out sick, injured, on vacation, in training or assigned elsewhere. Extra police hours also attach to specific civic demands. State law provides overtime pay when officers are required to work beyond regular hours on election days and at events like parades, races and public celebrations.

But those general pressures do not affect every department the same way. In Marblehead, overtime concentrates so heavily in one department that it becomes a defining feature of compensation.

Overtime: Extra shifts become the pay engine

The Marblehead Fire Department's 42 employees collected $1.6 million of the town's $3.2 million overtime total. Five firefighters earned more from extra shifts than from their base salaries.

Firefighter Charles Sprague topped all town workers at $112,531 in overtime, pushing his total compensation past $201,000. Firefighter Joseph Gray collected $97,900 beyond his regular pay. Fire Lt. Liam Gilliland earned $90,127 in overtime. For these employees and two others who also surpassed their base salaries through extra shifts, overtime did not supplement income.

Each of the 42 firefighters averaged $38,922 in overtime during fiscal 2025. That overtime represented 31 percent of the department's entire $5.3 million payroll, a rate nearly four times higher than the police department's 8.5 percent and far greater than the schools, where overtime barely registered. Regular pay accounted for barely half of total fire department compensation, with the remainder split between overtime and other payments including holiday pay, shift differentials and stipends.

In a follow up interview, Fire Chief Jason Gilliland said several structural and contractual factors drive overtime in the department, beginning with extended absences that require shifts to be covered. Two firefighters have been on extended military leave for the past two years, he said. Under state and contractual requirements, the town continues to pay their salaries while also staffing their shifts with overtime coverage.

The department is also carrying four long-term injuries, according to the chief, each of which requires overtime coverage for every affected shift. Those absences, he said, reduce available staffing below minimum levels even before vacation or sick time is accounted for.

Vacation, holiday and sick leave further contribute to overtime demand, the chief said, noting that all firefighters are contractually guaranteed at least two weeks of vacation, with senior firefighters entitled to additional time. Firefighters also receive holiday and sick leave. The department’s sick leave usage, he said, falls within the norm for fire departments across Massachusetts.

Mutual aid obligations are another significant factor. Marblehead provides more mutual aid than it receives, the chief said, averaging about 25 mutual aid responses per year to communities including Salem and Lynn. Each time an engine is sent out of town, he said, the department must backfill that engine with an officer and two firefighters, which requires overtime staffing.

The chief also pointed to academy restrictions affecting new hires. Two firefighters were hired last year, but until they graduate from the fire academy, they are not permitted to fight fires and may respond only to medical calls. Because they do not count toward minimum fire staffing during that period, their shifts must be backfilled with overtime, he said.

Addressing a specific overtime figure cited in the payroll data, the chief said the overtime of his son, Liam Gilliland, includes federally reimbursed deployment time. Gilliland serves on the State Urban Search and Rescue team and was deployed during the fiscal year. While deployed, he is considered on duty, the chief said. Of the $90,127 in overtime attributed to Gilliland, approximately $30,000 was paid by FEMA. The town also receives 10 percent of that FEMA reimbursement for allowing him to serve on the team.

Despite those pressures, the chief said the department has never requested a reserve fund transfer to cover salaries. In most years, he said, the department returns more than $100,000 in unused salary funds to the town.

Police overtime followed different patterns despite similar public safety demands. The department spent $565,327 across 73 employees. Sgt. Sean Brady earned $91,086 in overtime, pushing his total compensation to $278,210. Three police lieutenants each collected between $24,000 and $53,000 in extra pay. The average police employee earned $7,744 in overtime compared with the fire department's $38,922 per person.

Roadwork details by police are lucrative overtime. They are often driven by utility projects rather than town paving schedules because the companies that own underground infrastructure typically control when and where streets get opened. Water, sewer, gas, electric and telecom crews may need to trench to install or replace mains, repair breaks, or connect new service, and the work can trigger police details, lane shifts, and temporary patches that linger until a permanent repair is scheduled.

In many Massachusetts communities, utility companies also pay for traffic control and required police details tied to their permits, meaning a noticeable share of “roadwork” residents see on a given day is funded and managed through utility excavation permits rather than municipal road budgets.

Top earners once overtime is included

Six of the town's 10 highest-paid employees worked in the police department, though the top earner came from elsewhere.

Joseph Kowalik, former general manager of the municipal light department, earned $403,989 in total compensation, with $364,384 in base pay and $39,606 in other payments. His total exceeded the second-highest earner, police Lt. Jason Conrad at $283,202, by more than $120,000. Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer earned $219,951 and Superintendent John Robidoux collected $216,750, both receiving primarily base salary with minimal additional payments.

Meanwhile, Kowalik’s pay stands out in Marblehead’s compensation data because his top-tier salary at the municipal light department intersects with a contract transition that produced a separate, one-time payout: The MMLD board moved to end his tenure Sept. 28 and provide a severance of about $207,295 described as one year’s salary under his 2021 contract.

Department size bore little relationship to overtime costs. The cemetery division's 10 employees generated $12,938 in overtime. The library's 31 workers earned $8,302 in extra pay. Recreation and parks employed dozens of seasonal workers who typically earned between $1,000 and $8,000 for summer positions.