An obscure office called the San Francisco Civil Service Commission determines salaries for the city’s elected officials, and on Monday their staff recommended that the Board of Supervisors all get four percent salary raises. But the commission decided to splurge and pump the supes’ pay raises up to 12 percent, as the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the supervisors will get a $15,000 pay raise this year. Most other elected officials and city employees will only get that four percent raise.

Those supervisor salaries, now bumped up $140,000 annually, are still pretty paltry compares to some city employees. For example, a guy you’ve probably never heard of, San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System chief investment officer William Coaker, makes more than $500,000 a year. In fact the supes’ six-figure salaries still do not put them anywhere near the 25 highest-paid San Francisco employees reported by the San Francisco Business Times last October, a list dominated by sheriff’s deputies making more than $300,000, and in one case $400,000, with all their overtime.

Nevertheless, the supervisors’ very big pay raise was still unexpected. “The boost was appropriate to bring the pay more in line with the responsibilities of the job,” commission president F.X. Crowley explained at Monday’s meeting. He said the salaries were “artificially low” for a city with an $11 billion budget.

“That’s a billion dollars a supervisor,” Crowley said. “We want professionals making professional decisions.”

For perspective, Mayor London Breed’s $301,000 salary makes her the highest-paid mayor in the United States. But her salary is still not the highest among city employees. Several San Francisco sheriffs deputies, public health administrators, and retirement services directors make more than $400,000 annually.