By Mayor's Logic, Laredo City Manager should be making around $52,000?

Ok, I guess my speechlessness didn't last that long.

Mayor Raul Salinas used comparison of other cities's population and their respective city manager salaries to justify a $40,000 increase for city manager Villarreal.  This brings our city manager's salary to $230,000 a year. Ok, so far I can understand the comparative approach. 

We should note however, that, using the mayor's own logic, the city manager would be looking at a rather low salary if the comparison involved Laredo and let's say- Dallas, Texas.  Big D has a population of 1.2 Million people, or roughly 5 times the population of Laredo.  The Dallas city manager makes $261,000 a year.

Therefore, following the mayor's reasoning, our own city manager should be paid about one fifth of what the Dallas city manager gets paid? This, again, is because Laredo only has about 1/5 of the population , so thus calling for a salary of 1/5th as much?  That's the essence of the mayor's arguement.

Ok, so lets see, it looks like that would bring the Laredo city manager's salary to about $52,000 a year.  Now, why would our mayor and city council not select Dallas for comparative purposes?