How much do officials make in Idaho’s 2nd-largest city? Search our 2025 database
How much do elected officials earn in Idaho’s second-largest city? What about police officers?
The Idaho Statesman has compiled the latest data on Meridian workers’ salaries, including the Mayor’s Office, the City Council, Planning and Zoning and the Police Department.
Situated west of Boise, Meridian has grown rapidly in recent years and boasts a population of more than 147,000 people, according to estimates from the Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho. That’s more than four times its population at the start of the century.
The city, traditionally a bedroom community of Boise, has also attracted businesses and jobs — now importing more workers than it exports.
As for City Hall, the 618 employees on the city’s payroll earn an average of $86,455 a year, according to data provided by the City Clerk’s Office on Dec. 17. That ranges from part-time scorekeepers in the Parks and Recreation Department earning $13,500 a year, or $13 an hour, to a city attorney paid roughly $192,600 a year.
The attorney, Bill Nary, is the city’s highest-paid employee, followed by Police Chief Tracy Basterrechea, who earns about $189,900 a year.
Elected officials in the city tend to make less. Mayor Robert Simison, earned just shy of $139,400 a year when data was provided, making him the city’s 38th highest-paid employee. But he’s slated for a $3,500 pay bump this year, plus another $3,500 in 2027, the Meridian City Council decided in July.
City Council members on the six-person council earn roughly $17,300 a year, while the council’s president earns nearly $19,100 a year for the part-time role.
But salaries aren’t the only marker of compensation for city workers. In fiscal year 2025, the city paid over $2.5 million in various forms of overtime, data showed, much of it to police officers and firefighters.
Uniformed patrol officers for the police department earned an average of $12,300 in overtime pay last fiscal year, on top of average salaries north of $104,000. Four city employees — three police officers and a fire captain — earned more than $30,000 in overtime.
Meridian voters passed a public-safety levy in November that’s expected to raise police salaries by 9% starting on Oct. 1, 2026, following concerns that Meridian police wages couldn’t keep pace with robust compensation packages in Boise.
Search the pay of more than 600 Meridian employees with the Statesman’s salary database below. (If your device doesn’t display the search fields, click here.) Note that not all of the overtime earners over the last fiscal year will appear in the database, which includes only people actively employed by the city as of Dec. 17.
Meridian salary database
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.
