Assistant City Manager Ken Striplin discusses redevelopment and the city’s enterprise zone on SCVTV’s “Newsmaker of the Week” show in 2010.

The Santa Clarita City Council is scheduled to approve an employment contract Tuesday with its new city manager, Ken Striplin.

Santa Clarita’s assistant city manager for the past eight years, Striplin was selected last week to succeed his boss, Ken Pulskamp, who retires at the end of the year.

If the council approves Striplin’s contract, he’ll receive a base salary of $220,000 per year to run City Hall – roughly 12.5 percent, or $31,388.80, less than his predecessor.

Pulskamp, who has been with the city since 1988, and since 2002 as city manager, is paid a base salary of $ 251,388.80, according to the city’s human resources department.

But for Striplin it represents a 10-percent increase over his current salary as the No. 2 staffer at City Hall.

As proposed, the contract would give Striplin a 5-percent raise in 2014 and 2016 if he aces his performance evaluations. This is “consistent with compensation increases granted to other employees in conjunction with their performance evaluations,” a city staff report states.

In addition, he would receive deferred compensation, pension, health care and other benefits, and 20 days of paid vacation.

The city manager is responsible for the city’s day-to-day operations and has exclusive hiring and firing authority over all employees. Striplin would take the helm Jan. 1.

The staff report says Striplin’s proposed salary “is 5 percent below the average salaries for city managers at the benchmark cities and ranks eighth lowest out of the 11 cities,” and says “the rate of increase over his current pay as assistant city manager is standard with the pay increase provided to other city employees upon promotion.”

The report offers comparisons with comparably sized cities: