If you made more than $300,000 working for the city of Newton last year, odds are you wore a badge. A newly released payroll database shows that eight city employees cleared the $300,000 mark in 2025, and seven of them were members of the Newton Police Department. The single highest-paid worker on the list took home $354,772, with Newton Public Schools Superintendent Anna Nolin and former Mayor Ruthanne Fuller also appearing among the top earners.
As reported by MassLive, the outlet has published a full, searchable Newton payroll database for calendar-year 2025. The list names Police Officer Rocco Marini as the top earner at $354,772, followed by Police Officer Dennis O’Brien at $346,001 and Police Lt. David Tempesta at $332,230. Superintendent Anna Nolin is listed at $307,536, while former Mayor Ruthanne Fuller is recorded at $156,726.
City payroll in context
According to the City of Newton’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, the city employed roughly 3,279 people in fiscal year 2025 and reported a covered payroll of about $131,298,728 in pension schedules. Those figures give residents a sense of scale for the newly public payroll totals and show how a relatively small number of very high earners can represent an outsized share of personnel costs and pension exposure.
Why police officers top the list
Across Massachusetts, municipal payroll disclosures routinely reveal public safety staff crowding the top of city pay rankings because overtime and paid “detail” assignments can significantly boost base salaries. The Boston Globe reported that police overtime pushed Boston officers to the top of that city’s 2025 payroll, a pattern that helps explain why Newton’s highest-paid employees are largely police officers. To understand what any one person actually earned in regular salary versus add-ons, residents would need to look at the line-item breakdowns for base pay, overtime, detail work and other compensation.
What this could mean locally
The public release of the database will likely sharpen local debates about staffing levels, contract negotiations and budget priorities as Newton’s finance and school leaders finalize their fiscal plans. Newton posts budget materials and background reports on the City of Newton finance pages, which, taken together with the MassLive database, give residents tools to compare personnel costs across departments and over time. Observers should keep in mind that those headline pay totals combine multiple categories of compensation and do not necessarily reflect base salary alone…