By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
This is part six of our continued series on Washington Public Safety Employee wages. In this issue, we report on wage rankings for 911 Dispatchers and Police Records Clerks.
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.
This year, as it has been in past years, the highest paid Dispatch agency is Pierce County’s LESA, topping the list at both the 5 year No Degree and 25 year BA level. LESA exceeds second place Valley Comm by $170 per month, followed closely by Port of Seattle. Spokane Dispatchers, unlike their Police Officers, rank high, coming in at 4th place. Wapato Dispatchers bottom out the list at $2733 per month, just behind Garfield County.
The Records Clerk data reveals some surprises in the rankings. Renton continues its historic high ranking at the top paid Records Clerks and they are immediately followed in 2nd through 4th places by Monroe, Medina and Fife, not cities one would normally associate with high pay.
Surprisingly, Seattle Dispatchers are ranked 39th place, between Bremerton and Bonney Lake. King County also ranks somewhat lower than what might be predicted at 27th, between Arlington and Ridgefield.
In some future articles in this series, we’ll delve into factors which appear to contribute to these rankings, including geographic location, population and assessed valuation. In those articles, we reveal how geography, size and tax base are highly predictive of wage rankings but in the case of Seattle and King County records Clerks, for example, that does not always prove to be the sole explanation. In the next article in this series, we’ll turn to a discussion about the extent to which Population is associated with wage rankings.
