Boise’s 9 Highest Paid City Employees And Their Huge Paychecks Revealed

🗳️ Data for city employee salaries for many of Idaho's 198 incorporated cities is easily available online

🗳️ Both the Mayor and City Council got a raise on January 1

🗳️ The Mayor and council members do NOT rank among the Top 9

It’s tax time and many of us are looking back at our W-2s to see just how much we made in 2024. Ever wonder how your salary compares to what some of our city leaders are making? 

READ MORE: Idaho's 9 Highest Paid Employees And Their Huge Paychecks Revealed for 2025

As it turns out, that information has been sitting right under your nose! A few weeks ago, we put together a list of the highest paid State of Idaho employees using information from Transparent Idaho. It’s a database maintained by the State Controller’s office. 

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Brandon Woolf’s office wants to make sure that Idahoans can see a uniform look at the allocation of where their tax dollars are going, so they gathered tons of data like budgets, expenditures and salaries across multiple levels including state, county and city governments. It’s all searchable without special credentials HERE. 

Who Are the City of Boise's Highest Paid Employees and What Do They Make?

This time around, we took a deep dive into the data for the City of Boise, which was last reported to Transparent Idaho in June 2024. 

Most of the city employees' earnings were reported by an hourly pay rate. It’s widely accepted that working a 40 hour work week, means that a full-time employee will work about 2,080 per year. So, if you want a rough estimate of these city leaders’ annual salaries, go ahead and multiply the rate you see by 2,080. 

Mayor and City Council Do NOT Rank Among the Top 9

One thing we found a bit surprising is the fact that Mayor Lauren McLean’s Chief of Staff out earns the mayor herself. Mayor McLean didn’t make the Top 9 list, but in June 2024 her pay rate was listed at $74.03 an hour. That means the mayor made roughly about $153,980 last year. Boise City Code does include a raise for the Mayor that went into effect on January 1, 2025. This year she’ll be making $157,060. 

While serving as a City Council member isn’t really a full-time job, council members are still listed as full-time with a pay rate of $13.48. That means they made about $28,048 in 2024. City Code includes a raise for them as well, bumping their annual pay to $28,609 effective January 1, 2025. That means the new pay rate is about $13.75 an hour. 

So if the Mayor didn’t make the Top 9 and City Council is very far from the Top 9, who are the city’s top earning employees? Take a look for yourself!