City wages in spotlight

COEUR d'ALENE - When it comes to city salaries, all three Coeur d'Alene mayoral candidates said it's an area that needs to be studied to determine if wages or jobs should be cut.

Only one said there's a problem with the structure.

Coeur d'Alene recently completed a survey that found its employees earned 11.5 percent more than their counterparts in other cities, and none of the three candidates said that means City Hall has to whack wages across the board.

Candidate Steve Widmyer said one of his first goals as mayor would be to change the salary structure. He called the results from the salary survey "kind of alarming."

"Eleven and a half percent is too high," he said. "You have to dig into that. You owe it to the citizens of Coeur d'Alene."

A small business owner and former controller of financial reporting for The Coeur d'Alene Resort, Widmyer said he would look at all the departments and job responsibilities to see if "efficiencies" could be incorporated, but a starting point would be the city's salary structure.

"That would be my main focus to start off with," he said, pointing to the Cost of Living Adjustment amounts allowing employees to exceed their wage scale caps as a possible starting point to alter. "My focus in establishing this new salary structure would be that the city salary structure needs to be fair. But it needs to be fair for both sides: It needs to be fair for the employee and it also needs to be fair for the taxpayer. That might take a little tweaking.

"I've worked with large budgets; I've worked in those complex organizations," he added. "It's not going to be an overnight fix. Nothing really is an overnight fix, but it's something we can definitely work toward."

Candidate Mary Souza said that if elected, she wouldn't take the mayor's post planning to pare wages or jobs.

"To have anyone walk in the door with a new job of being in charge of things and have them have a predetermined decision to fire people is ridiculous," Souza said. "You've got to go in and get a sense of how things are going, how efficient they are."

Souza said she would examine the financial situation of the city and part of that process would be to study the city's salary structure, staffing and responsibilities to see if anything could be made more efficient. An example would be combining the parks and recreation departments into one, she said.

"I wouldn't call it downsizing - efficiencies," she said. "Because I'm not going in there saying I'm going to slash jobs. No, no, not at all. I think we have to look at how the responsibilities flow, and where help is needed and where we may have some efficiencies."

Souza was an organizer of Recall CDA, which attempted to recall four incumbents last year. The recall attempt was primarily based on the incumbents' support of the McEuen Park project, though Recall CDA also cited incumbents' approval of "excessive" salaries for city employees as a reason.

"Some of them I think are, definitely (overpaid)," Souza said. "I think it's the people at the top and the department heads and right up there at the top. It's those top 23 or 24 people that are making up over $100,000."

But, she added, salaries on the whole aren't a serious problem.

"I think the average city worker is not seriously overpaid, maybe a bit," she said.

Five department heads are set to retire in the next two years, which is expected to save the city at least $145,000 in that span, according to the city. The city's wage scales allow an employee to top out on the scale but still receive cost of living increases.

One of the retiring department heads is Police Chief Wayne Longo, who steps away Oct. 1. The city decided to do a national search for his replacement in January 2014, after the new City Council is sworn in. The city has named Ron Clark as interim police chief. The Aug. 25 fatal shooting of Eric B. Johnston by a Coeur d'Alene police officer, meanwhile, is under investigation by the Idaho State Police.

Widmyer said he'd like to see the strong working relationships between the city and the associations and union continue. He said he would support a national search for the next police chief.

"I have a tremendous amount of respect for Wayne Longo. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Christie Wood and the things I've talked with her about, so I feel good about our police department," he said. "I think you can look nationally ... (but) it could very well be the best candidate is the in-house guy."

Souza said she supports looking nationally and would consider hiring a consultant to review the department to see if anything else should be changed during the transition period.

"Because we're changing chiefs, because we will have a change of administration because the mayor is retiring, I think it's an appropriate time to really do a good review and see what we're dealing with," she said.

Candidate Joe Kunka doesn't favor looking nationally to name the next chief.

He said he's confident in the police department and would like to see an internal promotion to ensure a smooth transition when the guard changes.

"I would promote from within, someone that has lived in Coeur d'Alene, has been in Coeur d'Alene, knows Coeur d'Alene maybe has some roots in Coeur d'Alene," Kunka said. "I don't think I would go the national search route. You really don't know what you're going to get when you go the national search route."

Kunka said he couldn't say if city salaries should be altered without studying job responsibilities at City Hall first.

"I know there is a couple people who make an awful lot of money and I'm not qualified to say they don't deserve that money," he said. "What we need to do is we need to find out exactly what they do to earn that money. Am I going to go in and start cutting salaries? No."

He said the city's two collective bargaining agencies and the fire union have a good working relationship with the city, which he said he'd like to see continue.

"I know that my opponents are talking about coming in doing big, sweeping, massive changes," he said. "I don't think that's the answer."

None of the three candidates said they support City Councilman Steve Adams's position on not accepting federal grants. Adams votes against anything with federal dollars tied to it, including a recent grant used to hire police officers.