San Juan Pays More Workers $100,000 Than Most O.C. Cities

San Juan Capistrano employed 18 workers who earned base salaries of more than $100,000 each in 2009, an Orange County Grand Jury report released Thursday shows.

Adjusted per population, San Juan rounds out the top five cities with the highest number of such workers in Orange County.

Aiming to find abuses, the grand jury looked at pay for each of the 34 cities' elected officials, as well as pay of their employees who earned a base salary in excess of $100,00 annually. 

While it did not find any "individual abusive compensation level, the analysis did reveal a substantial number of positions in municipal organizations with base salaries in excess of $100,000." It ranked cities by based on the number of $100,000 positions per 10,000 population.

San Juan ranks fifth, with 18 employees and a population of 36,870, which equates to 4.88 positions per 10,000 population. Laguna Beach (population 25,208) tops the list at 8.73, while Rancho Santa Margarita (population 49,704) is on the bottom rung at 0.80.

Although the report does not specify the individual employees or the exact salaries of those who earn more than $100,000 each, it does include charts that display the highest five and lowest five cities for each of the following positions: city council member, city manager, city clerk, city engineer and directors of finance, public works, parks and recreation, community development, human resources, information technology and building official.

San Juan’s city clerk, finance officer and human resources director are identified as being among the lowest earners countywide in their respective posts.

Contradictory to what the report shows, San Juan's finance director is more likely among the highest paid. The report erred in reporting her salary as $102,288, rather than the actual amount of $161,000.

The report also failed to identify two other San Juan Capistrano positions with salaries above $100,000 in 2009: the utilities director (which would fall under the report's city engineer category) and community services director (which would have been placed in the report along with parks and recreation directors).

With corrected salary information for the finance director, here's what the report shows:

* Benefits include deferred compensation, bonus pay, insurance premiums, auto allowance, pension contributions and pay in lieu of time off. Rankings vary, as not all cities reported income for each of the positions listed above. 

San Juan Capistrano employees pay a share of their pension that ranges from 5.01 to 7.74 percent of their salaries.

The city pays for 100 percent of , and provides auto allowances to each of its managers and executives. Those allowances range from $720 to $4,200 yearly.

Correction: This article contains the correct total for the total salary of the finance director positon.