How much does Boise pay city employees? Search our 2024 salary database
The city of Boise has nearly 2,500 employees.
Who makes the most money? The airport director, Rebecca Hupp, earns about $291,000 per year.
Who makes the least? Some employees who are paid hourly at the Parks and Recreation Department.
Most notable in the city’s records are the Boise Police Department’s overtime pay rates. The department has struggled with staffing in recent years, former Chief Ron Winegar told the Idaho Statesman at his retirement party in September. The department has used overtime to “help fill those gaps,” said Haley Williams, a spokesperson for the department.
The department paid out nearly $5 million in overtime in fiscal year 2024, in some cases nearly doubling officers’ salaries. Officer Cpl. Kyle Wills, for example, earns a salary of about $113,000 — and in fiscal year 2024, he earned an additional $92,000 in overtime. Nine other members of the department each earned over $60,000 in overtime in the same period.
In December, Chief Chris Dennison told Boise’s City Council that the department was slated to fill all vacancies in January — though Williams said overtime is “something that will never go away completely” because of the “unpredictable nature of police work” and the time required to get a new officer up to speed.
Dennison and Boise’s fire chief are among the highest-paid employees. Dennison earns about $217,000 annually, while Fire Chief Mark Niemeyer earns about $201,000. Stephan Burgos, the head of the city’s Public Works Department, earns about $215,000 annually.
Mayor Lauren McLean’s salary is about $154,000, less than that of Chief of Staff Courtney Washburn, who makes about $200,000. City Council members make about $28,000 in their part-time roles.
On average, city employees earn about $65,000 per year.
Below is a searchable database showing the salaries of all city employees as of December 2024. Some searches will contain multiple pages of results.
The Idaho Statesman obtained this data through a public records request. Here’s how and why we did it:
BEHIND THE STORY
MOREWhy did we make this public?
Public employees work for taxpayers. Their salaries and wages are public information.
Idaho state employee pay has been publicly available on various websites, including the Idaho Statesman’s, for years. But there hasn’t always been an easy way to see what Treasure Valley’s local governments pay their employees.
We believe there is value in opening the curtains to show how governments spend taxpayer money. Not only can that sunshine help prevent and catch fraud, waste and abuse, it lets us see how wages differ between, and within, the many offices of our local governments.
Have an idea for another database? Think we should make more information public? Contact us at newsroom@idahostatesman.com or tips@idahostatesman.com.
How did we get the data?
We requested payroll data from local governments in May 2023.
What's the fine print?
First, this is a snapshot in time. Employees are hired, fired, promoted and given raises every day.
Second, employees aren’t all paid the same way. For the most part, you can figure out an employee’s annual pay by multiplying their hourly rate by 2,080. But that’s not always true. Some employees are part-time. Some, like council members, are paid a set amount. Others work more hours than normal and/or get overtime — emergency first responders especially — so their annual pay may be higher than their hourly rate would suggest.
Finally, the “hire date” isn’t necessarily the date that person first joined the ranks of public servants. Some employees are seasonal, temporary or took other jobs between stints working for the city or county.
Alex Brizee contributed reporting.
