COEUR d’ALENE — When someone calls for help they’re not thinking about what the officer who is responding gets paid. But officers do get paid, though an agency-to-agency comparison shows that it’s not equally.

For example, if those in distress are in the city of Coeur d’Alene, chances are the officer who responds will be making about $28 per hour.

Why? Because the average pay for the Coeur d’Alene police department’s beat officers is $28.34.

By comparison, if a deputy from Kootenai County is responding, he or she is likely making about $22 an hour. In that jurisdiction, the average is $22.22 — about 27 percent less than the man or woman in uniform a couple of miles down the road.

Coeur d’Alene City Councilman Dan Gookin said recently that when it comes to setting city officer wages, it’s the reality of potentially losing officers to higher-paying agencies in Spokane that tip the pay scale higher.

“Obviously, we don’t want to lose good people, so we want to stay competitive,” Gookin said.

Coeur d’Alene police spokeswoman Sgt. Christie Wood said the department just lost an officer to the Spokane Police Department.

“The chief over there has announced he is hiring 26 more officers in this budget year so we could lose some more,” Wood said.

She added, “Generally, our officers stay with us because the city does its best to be competitive in wages and benefits, but we lose some from time to time.”

The average pay for Post Falls officers on the beat is $24, and it’s $20.16 for Rathdrum.

“We are far below the average pay in our market area,” said Kootenai County Sheriff Ben Wolfinger. “This causes us a higher than normal turnover rate and a serious reduction in long-term employees who are able to pass on experience and mentor younger officers.”

He said it also reduces the number of so-called “mid-level” deputies who should become the leaders and administrators of the future.

Wolfinger said the county has had several pay studies completed during the past 20-plus years, but “(the county commissioners) have never funded compensation in accordance with any of the pay studies.”

There’s value in retaining deputies to reduce hiring costs and training, he said.

“Not everyone seems to understand this value,” Wolfinger said.

Kootenai County Commissioner Dan Green knows competitive pay affects retention, and added the commissioners have worked with the sheriff to establish rates.

“I think the city of Coeur d’Alene is very generous,” Green said.

The commissioners balance the money the county takes in from taxes with the pay demands of the area officer job market and the needs of the county’s residents for service, Green said.

“We’re right where we need to be,” he said. “We’re not the highest, and not the lowest.”

He said that while the county’s pay is lower than Coeur d’Alene’s and Spokane’s, the quality of life of living and working in Kootenai County can be attractive to deputies.

Commissioner Jai Nelson said the county’s pay matrix for deputies is based on certification level and seniority, and it was increased overall by 0.7 percent on Dec. 1.

“My goal is to bring the county closer to market pay, while balancing our commitment to both our employees and the community at large,” Nelson said last week. Further, she said, bonus funds were allocated to the sheriff to use this year at his discretion.

With a training stipend and shift pay, many officers receive more than $1 extra per hour, she said.

“Many of the deputies also make a significant amount of annual income from overtime pay,” which is not reflected in the pay matrix, Nelson said. “All the more reason that taking an average of $22.22 per hour doesn’t necessarily paint the entire picture.”

Commissioner Todd Tondee said maintaining deputies “perpetuates good law enforcement.”

It also saves money, he said, as it costs more than $100,000 to get a new deputy on board and fully trained.

“We’re trying to be good stewards of the taxpayers’ dollars and we’re trying to be fair” to deputies, Tondee said. To pay more the county would have to raise taxes, and that isn’t what the commissioners’ constituents want.

He said employees of the county generally are paid less than those at the city.

“We really do respect what they do,” he said. “We are grateful they are employees of the county.”

The minimum pay for Coeur d’Alene officers is $21.61 an hour, and goes up to a maximum of $30.41. That compares with a starting wage of $19.29 an hour for county deputies and up to $27.50 for a deputy who holds a master’s degree and is in his ninth year on the job, which is the top of the deputy pay matrix.

Both the city and county patrolmen benefit at the same rate under the Public Employee Retirement System of Idaho, with an 8.36 percent deduction contributed by the employee and 11.66 percent matched by the city or county.

For health care, the county’s deputies pay a premium of $220.56 per month for family coverage under a $500 for individual and $1,000 for family deductible plan. The city’s officers pay $129.64 under a comparable deductible level plan.

For deputies, the maximum out-of-pocket medical expense is $2,000 for the individual and $4,000 for a family. For the city, under the comparable plan, the out-of-pocket maximum is $1,500 for the individual and $3,000 for a family.

Tad Leach, a retired undersheriff for Kootenai County, said he studied the difference in compensation between Coeur d’Alene and the county for years. He said while the county has a matrix showing increases in pay annually for patrol deputies, the county sometimes doesn’t fund the increases prescribed by the matrix.

“(The county commissioners) haven’t always funded the matrix — that’s the problem,” Leach said this week. Deputies then fall behind their peers in other area agencies, he added.

“The city’s pay scale moves in larger steps and is funded each year,” Wolfinger said.

According to Leach, “Over the course of somebody’s career, that difference can add up to a significant amount of money.”

Leach said the loss of trained and experienced deputies is a “shame.”

“That’s a waste of taxpayer money,” Leach said.

There are currently 55 authorized road deputy positions who are answering calls for service and patrolling in the county.

Out of that number, there are five vacancies and five in training, leaving 45 actually out on the road. There are three deputies in the recreation safety section.

There is more than pay that separates city patrol officers and county deputies.

The city’s patrol officers work in a more dense and urban law enforcement environment, said Wood, the Coeur d’Alene police spokeswoman.

The sheriff’s office is responsible for all of the backcountry and waterways calls. In addition to emergencies, the sheriff’s office handles land disputes, illegal dumping, squatters and other matters that city police officers don’t.

“We have more calls for service,” said Wood.

According to 2012 crime statistics generated by the Idaho State Police, whether it’s assault, weapons law violations, fraud, intimidation, theft, robbery or rape, Coeur d’Alene has higher offense counts than the county.

The Coeur d’Alene police department’s officers handled 4,626 reported criminal offenses, while county deputies handled 3,136.

The Post Falls and Rathdrum departments handled 2,019 and 392, respectively.