This Boise-area city is growing and changing. How much do its employees make?
Garden City has a new highest-paid employee.
As of December 2024, City Attorney Charles Wadams tied with police Chief Cory Stambaugh, each raking in $160,000 per year, according to previous Statesman reporting. But Stambaugh’s salary stayed the same a year later, while Wadams now makes $164,800, according to data the Idaho Statesman obtained via a records request.
Garden City, a small but growing enclave almost entirely surrounded by Boise, has 85 employees. The city is known for its wine and beer offerings.
Council members, who work part-time, earn between $10,000 and $11,000 per year.
John Evans, the outgoing mayor made $50,000 in his role. After 20 years in office, Evans decided not to run for a sixth term in the November election.
Just 14 members of the non-elected staff work part-time, and the rest work 40 hours per week, with the exception of police officers, according to Lisa Leiby, the city treasurer and clerk. Other than the police chief and the two lieutenants, officers work on average 42 hours per week of shift work, which does not include overtime, Leiby said in an email to the Statesman.
All but one of the 14 part-time staff members works in the library.
For those who go above their hours, Garden City paid out $305,000 in overtime in 2025, mostly for public works and law enforcement employees. The number varied dramatically, from $28,900 in overtime to Police Officer Sikko Barghoorn to $42 for legal assistant Joanna Ortega.
On average, the 39 people who worked overtime earned nearly $8,000 of it, according to a Statesman analysis of the data.
Search the pay of Garden City’s full-time city employees in the Statesman’s database below. (If your device doesn’t display the search fields, click here.)
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 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 and overtime data from local governments in December 2025.
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, especially emergency first responders like firefighters and police officers, can work nontraditional hours and/or get overtime. Their annual pay may be higher — in some cases much 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.
This story was originally published January 9, 2026 at 4:00 AM.
