City Attorney, Steve Horton’s $247,000/year Compensation Package Equals 12 Times the Average Cottonwood Worker’s Pay, Sparks Outrage
By Sherry Twamley, Cottonwood Resident
(February 25, 2017)
TO PUT HORTON’S COMPENSATION IN PERSPECTIVE: Is $247,000 a year a good salary? ONLY 1% OF THE PEOPLE IN THE U. S. MAKE MORE MONEY THAN STEVE HORTON MAKES. To determine if $247,000 a year is a good salary, ResearchManiacs.com looked at all the salaries paid in the U. S. last year. Then, they looked at what percentile $247,000 fit into, and then assigned a grade to it. In other words, we compared the salary of $247,000 to all other salaries paid last year. ONLY 1% OF THE PEOPLE IN THE U.S. make more money!!! A $247,000 salary is in the 99 PERCENTILE of all salaries paid last year. That means that the grade for $247,000 is: A +.
A good salary means different things to different people. Someone living in Manhattan with five kids in private school may have a different view of a good salary compared to a single person living in a rural area in Utah who only needs money for skiing. In 11,800 population Cottonwood, where about 25% of the taxpayers live in poverty and the per capita avg. income is about $21,000/yr , much lower than the U. S. average worker’s pay, a small city like Cottonwood in a rural area should pay its employees far less than a large metropolitan city with a large population. But that is not the case. To put it in perspective, if your salary is $247,000 a year, about 99 percent of people in the US make less than you, and 1 percent make more than you. http://researchmaniacs.com/…/Is-247000-dollars-a-year-a…
1 Comment
I’m afraid Ms. Twamley is comparing apples and oranges. It is not fair to compare Mr. Horton’s compensation to the average US salary for all employment or even to the average Cottonwood salary for all jobs. A fairer comparison would be Mr. Horton’s compensation vs. the average compensation package for city attorneys in similar sized towns in Arizona.
Basic compensation theory is you base compensation rates to be competitive with nearby and similar sized cities. Failure to do so will result in an inability to hire qualified people since they will always have to option to work for other cities that pay more.