City dishes out for top salaries

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — Today’s issue of the Independent contains our annual report on city employee salaries. The list is on page 8.

Each year, the city spends about 31 percent of its total budget on employee salaries. For the calendar year of 2008, salaries cost the city $14,626,473.23. When you add benefits, which average about 20 percent, the cost goes up to about $17 million.

The 10 highest paid employees all make more than $75,000 a year with City Attorney R. David Pederson making the most at more than $107,000. He’s followed by City Manager Gerard J. Herrera, whose salary last year just topped $100,000.

In third place — and this may surprise some people — is a long-time police officer, Gerard Tholund, who ended the year with $95,413.12. City personnel officials said a lot of this came from overtime.

Police Deputy Chief John Allen, who came in 13th on the list at $75,689.27, said most of the overtime for Tholund and Benny Gaona Jr. — who came in fifth place with $82,515.01 — came from federal grants to cut down on drunken driving and DWI fatalities.

For example, Gaona was off duty on Thursday from the city police department but was planning to work 12 hours overtime under the grant program. He received time and a half for this time and while he was paid by the city, the city received full compensation from federal and state grants.

“The majority of DWI and traffic citations are made by officers working overtime on these grants,” Allen said, adding that because of the number of calls the police department gets, patrolmen on regular duty don’t have the time to write citations.

Stan Henderson, the city’s director of Public Works, is the highest paid department head, coming in fourth on the list with a salary of just less than $85,000. Two other department directors — Lance Allgood of Public Utilities and Judi Starkovich of Finance — also made the top 10 with salaries respectively of $82,250 and $79,109.

All of the others in the top 10 work for city utilities or the wastewater treatment plant.

The city’s mayor, Harry Mendoza, is about midway down the list with a salary of just more than $22,000. His position, as well as that of city councilmen, who make between $12, 941 and $16,131 a year, are considered part-time positions.

The city’s police chief, Robert L. Cron Jr. did not even make the top 20, having a salary last year of $68,022. The city’s fire chief, Robert Soto, was above him with a salary of almost $73,000.

According to surveys by the New Mexico Municipal League of what other cities pay in salaries, Cron is severely underpaid. The average police chief in the state, according to their records, gets paid $93,704.

Carlsbad, with a population about 3,500 more than Gallup, pays its police chief $81,064, according to personnel officials from that city. Gallup, however, surpasses Carlsbad in almost every police statistic, from the number of DWI arrests to the number of incidents investigated weekly by the police.

The city manager of Carlsbad makes $115,125 and the average salary of a city manager throughout the state, according to the Municipal League, was $125,000.

The city over the past several years, after reports that Gallup salaries were lagging behind that paid by other city governments, has been bringing some salaries up. It’s also been raising certain employees in various positions to bring their salaries up to the level being paid to others in similar positions within the city.