COEUR d'ALENE - When it comes to municipal pay scales, the city of Coeur d'Alene is competitive.

When it comes to actual wages, Coeur d'Alene employees are earning more on average than their counterparts in many other towns.

A salary survey recently done by BDPA Inc. shows that Coeur d'Alene employees right now are earning 11.5 percent more than their counterparts in 13 other municipalities, as well as the state of Idaho.

But the survey also says that the pay scales the city offers are between 2.67 percent and 3.36 percent above the market. That falls in the "competitive" category with other cities - plus or minus 5 percent of the average - according to the Boise-based company.

So, taking the two sets of figures together shows the city offers pay comparable to other cities, but employees are sticking around long enough to earn it.

"It tells me that salaries are competitive because we are in the market range they suggest we be in," City Administrator Wendy Gabriel said about the survey results. "It looks pretty good."

Maxing out

Pay scales are brackets with minimum and maximum salary levels that a certain position can earn. The city has 18 such brackets, and an employee can reach the high end typically in about nine years.

Human Resource Director Pam MacDonald said the city analyzed the 11.5 percent figure after it learned it was that much above the wage average and determined 50 percent of city employees are at the maximum of their salary range. Those employees have an average of 17 years experience with the city. Across the board, the average length of service for an employee is 11.42 years.

So the retention rate likely impacted the survey results, she said, especially compared to other surveyed cities, such as Boise, which had 1 percent of its employees who had maxed out their salary range.

"We see that as a positive," MacDonald said of the retention.

The survey contained job descriptions that represent a cross section of jobs from all city departments. Pocatello, Moscow, Idaho Falls, Lewiston, Nampa, Twin Falls, Boise, Post Falls, Meridian, Spokane, Pullman, Missoula and Bend, Ore., were surveyed, as was the state of Idaho.

The survey also found that Coeur d'Alene offers a competitive benefit package with an estimated value of less than 1 percent greater than the value of benefits offered by surveyed employers, according to a summary of the survey findings.

Other than the plus or minus 5 percent threshold being labeled as "competitive," the survey didn't classify anything that fell outside that window. For example, being 11.5 percent above average didn't earn a designation. It's up to cities to analyze their own numbers and act as they see fit, MacDonald said.

Hot political fodder

City salaries have been a controversial topic around town for the last several years, and will likely become a campaign issue heading into the November city council and mayoral election.

Salaries were one of the targeted topics during the recall attempt last year by the grassroots group, Recall CdA. The attempt to put a recall election for four incumbents on a ballot narrowly failed from lack of citizen signatures, and one Recall flier called city salaries "high and excessive" and classified them as "overspending."

Another Recall CdA flier compared the number of city employees who earned $100,000 or more to cities of similar size. Coeur d'Alene had 19 such employees, with $125,000 a year marking the high end. Twin Falls had four employees and Caldwell had none, based on information compiled by the Idaho Freedom Foundation.

City Councilman Dan Gookin said the new Boise survey missed the mark because people are concerned that the city's top wage earners make too much - not the average city employee.

"That's what the public is concerned about," he said. "They didn't target those department heads, those people who make $100,000, $130,000 a year ... Those questions were not resolved, so it was kind of an exercise."

What's ahead

The city has 348.53 full-time equivalent positions. City Finance Director Troy Tymesen said the proposed budget for next year will include merit increases and a 2 percent Cost of Living raise for employees when it goes to a workshop in two weeks. The city typically gives 3 percent COLA raises, but has abstained from giving them at all in recent years.

Post Falls Human Resource Director Teresa Benner said Post Falls hasn't conducted a salary survey as comprehensive as Coeur d'Alene's, which was conducted last winter and presented to the City Council last week. She said Post Falls did salary surveys for its police and water reclamation divisions last year and found that police were about 12 percent under average pay, and water and reclamation was down about 9 percent. The city adjusted the water pay by 3 percent, she said.

The last salary survey Coeur d'Alene conducted was in 2002.

Last year, the city's turnover rate was 9.5 percent, which included retirements, MacDonald said.

Gabriel said she was pleased to see that this time around, the results didn't recommend changes to the city pay structure; instead, most results landed the city in the "competitive" window. She added that it's a feather in City Hall's cap to be able to hold on to its employees as long as it does, with half the workforce having maxed out their pay grades.

"That says to me that people like working for the city of Coeur d'Alene," she said Thursday. "I think that employees are saying they feel they are getting compensated fairly ... and they enjoy the work they're doing and I think they enjoy the environment of being empowered to do their job, and having the support they have from the administration and City Council."