As a policy, Blanton said the city shies away from trying to be the best-paid city simply because it is the biggest. Staff salaries take a big bite out of city coffers already, Blanton said, with about 70 percent of the city's budget going toward paychecks.

"We try not to be the highest because if everyone strove to be the highest then you'd have an inflationary spiral," Blanton said. "Are we threatened? No, I don't think so. We might be curious if we thought other cities were over the top."

West Valley City's relatively low staff salaries also do not reflect its population — it is the second-largest city in Utah.

"We really pride ourselves on being very competitive," assistant city manager Paul Isaac said. "I want to be in a situation where we're not necessarily the highest-paid."

Seeking a balance

Walking that fine line between encouraging the best employees to stay on the city's payrolls while not spending too much of the budget on paychecks is tough, Isaac said, especially because the city competes for good employees not just with neighboring cities but also with the private sector.

But Isaac said he believes the city has ended up with lower salaries than some of its neighbors because West Valley's salary structure is determined by the city itself, not by private-sector consultants.

"Some of these other cities have gone out and hired outside consultants to look at their salaries," he said. He said consultants may factor in salaries of private-sector employees too heavily, so a city engineer ends up being paid closer to what a private engineer would make.

Other cities such as West Jordan are also trying to opt out of the race for highest salary. A recent effort by some City Council members to increase the mayor's salary failed — with the mayor's blessing.

Mayor Bryan Holladay recused himself from the discussion and did not sit in on the meeting, but he told the Deseret Morning News he opposed the proposed increase because the city's manager-council form of government calls for a part-time mayor who should be paid at a part-time rate.

"In my position, I got elected, I understood what the amount was and I don't have a problem staying with that," Holladay said.

A motion that failed even to garner a second would have increased the mayor's salary from the current $18,000 to somewhere around $50,000.

"If you pay someone $50,000, are you going to start expecting them to be full time?" Holladay said.

The city's human resources director, Debbie Bell, agreed. She said she began surveying the salaries of other cities and determined that "our mayor was paid competitively compared with other cities in the same position."