Eagle Salary Report Gets a D-

The City of Eagle recently spent $22,250 for a study to determine if its employees were being paid enough. Mayor Bandy frequently referred to this report in arguing for increasing city employee's salaries. However, he refused to release the full report to the public. The City Council ultimately had to vote to require the study to be made available. Surprise,surprise! The study suggests that several employees are dramatically overpaid.

Perhaps the much deeper problem with the report is the selection of comparable cities. Should the City of Eagle be compared to the City of Boise? Boise population is around nine times larger than Eagle. This would be like comparing a 2,000 square foot house to an 18,000 square foot house. Using Boise as a comparable might make sense if the salaries were first adjusted for population differences. This adjustment was not done in the Mercer report. The report also used Meridian and Nampa without making size adjustments. By using cities much larger than Eagle, and failing to make size difference adjustments, the conclusions are not credible. A regression analysis showing the relationship of salaries and population should have been used to establish the basis for making location adjustments.

If the comparable cities are adjusted for population size, the results are much different. For example, the Eagle P&Z Director is paid $82,500. The population-adjusted survey average is $56,145. This suggests 47% above the market. The Eagle City Clerk is paid $72,646. The population-adjusted survey average is $49,500. This also suggests 47% above the market.

The Mayor should ask the Mercer Group to refund the $22,250. Or, ask them to go back and pick cities that are more comparable in size, make adjustments for population differences, and see what the revised findings suggest. I'll bet a penny that more City of Eagle employees are found to be overpaid.

A simple way to test if Eagle city employee salaries are too low: Why haven't any city employees left for higher salaries in other similar-sized communities?