WEST BRIDGEWATER — The town’s top earners among public employees have seen some turnover since 2020. In all, there are four new names in the top 10 highest-paid West Bridgewater employees.
Leading the pack for calendar year 2022 earnings is the town’s top cop, Victor Flaherty. The chief of police brought home the single biggest paycheck for the year at $185,254. Keeping their places in the top 10 were names you’d expect: the superintendent of schools, the town administrator and several police officers.
Joining this year’s top 10 were two police sergeants (Sean P. Devilly and Christopher Werner), a police detective (Gerard F. Julian-Suarez) and a fire lieutenant (Shane Carr). They did so mostly by pulling significant overtime.
Here’s the top 10:
Top 10 West Bridgewater earners
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Overtime champs
In 2022, 83 people earned at least some overtime. That’s about 14% of the 586 people the town paid at least a dollar.As in most municipalities, some employees earned half or more of their base salary in OT.
For West Bridgewater, that included EMS Coordinator Adam Silva and fire department employees Michael T. Devilly, Justin R. Donna and Kevin J. Foster Jr.
Below are the 10 top earners of OT. If you’d like to dive deeper into who worked extra hours in calendar 2022, there’s an interactive spreadsheet below the top 10.
Who pulled the most OT?
2 Brockton cops made more than $400 Here are the city’s top 10 highest paid workers
Paycheck extras
Working for the government tends to pay less for doing similar jobs in the private sector. But public employees have ways to bulk up their pay envelopes. Perhaps the best known is when police officers work “details” such as directing traffic at construction sites. Other sources include longevity bonuses, education incentives and hazard pay.
Like some of its peers, West Bridgewater doesn’t break down each of these additional pots of money. The town payroll has one column for “additional non-retirement” income. The category includes details, but we can’t show you who made the most from details alone. Important not for West Bridgewater tax payers: Many details are paid by the private companies who do the hiring. The cash appears in public payroll data, but taxpayers aren’t footing many of those particular bills.
Here are the 10 West Bridgewater employees who made the most in “additional non-retirement” income. If you’d like to find out more, use the interactive spreadsheet below to find out more on the 172 people who earned at least one dollar of this kind of income in 2022.
Top earners of ‘additional non-retirement’ cash
Which West Bridgewater jobs pay the most?
Among municipal employees, police and fire jobs tend to be paid the most, followed by teachers and, toward the lower end, custodians. As the Enterprise has crunched salary data in nearby municipalities this year, we’ve been able to say which jobs tend to pay best and least.
West Bridgewater, however, does not provide exact job titles in most of its payroll data. So we’ve had to comb through other town records to match folks with their jobs. We’ve also excluded earners who made especially low pay, as their pay was unlikely to reflect a full-year’s salary for the role.
Best-paying town jobs
Fire lieutenants — $128,450Police officers* —$107,907Teachers, Middle-Senior High School** — $93,594Teachers, MacDonald School*** — $71,321Custodian**** — $42,254Instructional aides, MSHS — $28,557
Source: West Bridgewater payroll for calendar year 2022*Among police officers making more than $50,000 in 2022**Among MSHS teachers earning more than $50,000 in 2022***Among MacDonald teachers earning more than $2,000 in 2022****Among custodians earning at least $15,000 in 2022
Crunch the numbers for yourself
Town payrolls give a window into who makes what and how that reflects town priorities. The data, though, can be tough to track down and use. Below is a table you can sort by any column to dig into what you want to know.
Mine the data
What did you find most interesting in the West Bridgewater payroll data? What’d we miss? Send your news tips to reporter Chris Helms by email at CHelms@enterprisenews.com or connect on Twitter at @HelmsNews.
