By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
In Part 4 of our on-going Wage Series, we now turn to the rankings of County, Deputy and City Police Officer rankings throughout the State. This series always produces both expected and unexpected information about the relative standing of jurisdictions.
We will provide you a good overview of those trends but for the most detailed and complete look at wage rankings and settlements, you’ll want to explore our Premium Website. If you’re not currently a Premium Website subscriber, contact Darrah Hinton at Cline & Associates and she’ll explain how you can become one.
For County Deputies, there’s no surprise that King County stands at number 1, although the wage gap between Number 2, is nearly $1500 a month at the reported maximum 25 year BA level. Somewhat surprising at the 5 year level, the number 2 jurisdiction is not Pierce or Snohomish, but Thurston County. At the 5 year rank in fact, Snohomish slid to 6th place, behind Yakima County.
Some small counties have crept up the list. Most noteworthy in that context is San Juan County which ranks 4th on the 25 year BA pay level. Clark and Spokane Counties slid a bit on the list with Jefferson County between them.
A review of the City Police Officer rankings also shows many of the same both expected and unexpected results.
Seattle tops the list, but Marysville is close behind. On the 5 year, No Degree wage ranking, Seattle is actually 3rd though, behind Mercer Island and Kirkland. Some previous high paid jurisdictions like Redmond, Kent and Vancouver now lag far behind their historic rankings. And Spokane continues to fall behind, now ranked only 32 despite being the 2nd largest City in the State.
For the specific wage numbers, please review the Charts available on our Premium Website. We report the wages for purposes of this summary survey at two levels, 5 year No Degree and 25 Year BA and indicate the wage and last contract year that wage is reported from.
We have performed a more in-depth analysis of these results and compared them to important contributing factors such as Geography, Population and Tax Base. In some of the articles ahead in this series, we’ll undertake a detailed review of how those factors may contribute to your wage ranking.
