{"id":61593,"date":"2026-01-24T18:15:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T23:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=61593"},"modified":"2026-01-24T18:15:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T23:15:16","slug":"two-lakeland-officials-score-high-marks-and-get-pay-raises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2026\/01\/24\/two-lakeland-officials-score-high-marks-and-get-pay-raises\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Lakeland officials score high marks, and get pay raises"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Two top&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theledger.com\/story\/news\/local\/2026\/01\/20\/lakeland-florida-awards-contract-rodda-contruction-for-long-sought-se7en-wetlands-education-center\/88266256007\/\">Lakeland&nbsp;<\/a>leaders have earned high marks from city officials, netting them significant pay raises.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"320\" height=\"317\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1110px) 100vw, 1110px\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/shawn-sherrouse-square.png?resize=320%2C317\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-11235\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/shawn-sherrouse-square.png?w=320&amp;ssl=1 320w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/shawn-sherrouse-square.png?resize=300%2C297&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/shawn-sherrouse-square.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">City Manager Shawn Sherrouse<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">City commissioners voted 7-0 on Jan. 20 to award merit-based pay raises to City Manager Shawn Sherrouse and City Attorney Palmer Davis.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" data-dominant-color=\"ab9686\" data-has-transparency=\"false\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"204\" height=\"192\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1110px) 100vw, 1110px\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Palmer-Davis.webp?resize=204%2C192\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-61594 not-transparent\" style=\"--dominant-color: #ab9686; aspect-ratio:1.0625915676379618;width:251px;height:auto\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">City Attorney Palmer Davis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sherrouse will be given a 3% merit-based pay raise, retroactive to the start of this fiscal year, Oct. 1. This brings his annual salary to $283,250, according to city spokesman Jamin Smith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s an increase of more than 18% since last year. Sherrouse received a $25,000 raise in October in his new contract based on a market wage study of comparable jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Davis will receive a 2.5% merit-based increase, retroactive to Oct. 1. This raises his annual salary to $238,293.93, Smith said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The merit-based raises provided to Sherrouse and Davis are aligned with the policy for Lakeland&#8217;s general employees: those with annual salaries below the market-average for their job title receive 3% merit-based raises, and those at or above the mid-point receive 2.5%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There was little to no public commentary about Davis or Sherrouse&#8217;s performance reviews, since the city commissioners decided that annual public evaluations and reviews were no longer mandatory. No public review was held.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two top&nbsp;Lakeland&nbsp;leaders have earned high marks from city officials, netting them significant pay raises. City commissioners voted 7-0 on Jan. 20 to award merit-based pay raises to City Manager Shawn&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"7591","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMDJcL2NpdHktb2YtbGFrZWxhbmQtcG5nLndlYnA_Zml0PTI4OSUyQzg3JnNzbD0xIiwidHh0IjoiVHdvIExha2VsYW5kIG9mZmljaWFscyBzY29yZSBoaWdoIG1hcmtzLCBhbmQgZ2V0IHBheSByYWlzZXMiLCJ0ZW1wbGF0ZSI6ImhpZ2h3YXkiLCJmb250IjoiIiwiYmxvZ19pZCI6MTYzMDQwNjYxfQ.0v1PC_1anyqjkxF1mOwVCL838lB6lGnjB8hkRzJcddQMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":54104,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/city-of-lakeland-png.webp","type":"image\/png"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[7591],"tags":[13326,13325],"class_list":["post-61593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-city-of-lakeland","tag-and-get-pay-raises","tag-two-lakeland-officials-score-high-marks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61595,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61593\/revisions\/61595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}