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John “Jack” Helin
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TAB 5
The Chieftain (Bonner Springs, KS)
September 12, 2012
The Price of Loyalty: Setting Wages a Balancing Act for Area Cities
By Matt Ericson
This year, the average police officer in Shawnee takes home an hourly wage of about $23.59, a
rate equal to about $49,000 per year, not including overtime. Across the Kansas River in
Basehor, the average officer earns about $16.76 per hour, equivalent to just under $35,000 per
year. If you were considering a career in law enforcement, where would you rather work?
The Chieftain/Sentinel examined the wages being paid to municipal employees in five northeast
Kansas cities, and it found that the differences between the smaller and larger cities in the
Kansas City area are significant. City officials said those amounts reflect a balancing act that
considers salaries at nearby cities of similar size, the proximity of larger cities with much deeper
pockets, and how much taxpayer money elected officials are willing or able to spend. Officials at
the smaller cities examined said their location near the Kansas City metropolitan area introduced
a competition factor to the equation that similar towns elsewhere in Kansas don’t face. “A small
town next to Mission Hills would have a different pay scale than Iola in southeast Kansas,” said
Nathan McCommon, city administrator in Tonganoxie. But even for Shawnee, with a population
of about 62,000, competition is a fact of life, said City Manager Carol Gonzales. “We are always
competing with other cities for the best people,” Gonzales said. Especially in the area of police
officers, the city of Basehor has been in a pinch in recent years, says Police Chief Lloyd Martley,
who has also served as interim city administrator for about the past year.
According to the information collected by the Chieftain/Sentinel, the city’s average policeofficer
wages lagged behind similar-sized cities Tonganoxie and Baldwin City, which like
Basehor have populations a bit less than 5,000. But Basehor lies closer to the Kansas City
metropolitan area than the other two towns, which caused Martley to feel like he was operating a
training ground for larger agencies. Lansing, Leavenworth, Shawnee, Olathe and Lawrence are
all within a roughly 30-minute car ride from Basehor, he noted.
Most applicants for the city’s police department have no experience, he said, so it takes about six
months to a year for them to become truly effective officers. But nothing’s stopping them from
leaving at that point for a higher-paying agency, which can reap the rewards of Basehor’s
work.“When you invest a lot of money and time on somebody, you hate to lose them for just a
couple dollars an hour,” Martley said.
The Basehor City Council attempted to remedy that situation this summer by approving pay
increases of about 10 percent for most police officers. The move will bump the average officer’s
wage up to about $18.50 per hour — above the salary in Tonganoxie to the west, but still below
nearby Bonner Springs (about $20.70). The larger suburbs are in a different universe altogether.
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