Ask Mr. Answer Person: "How much do county supervisors earn?"

Jan asks Mr. Answer Person: "What is the annual salary of each member of the Winneshiek County Board of Supervisors?  What are the other 'perks' that they get, monetary or otherwise?  Are they eligible for IPERS?  Does it include health insurance?   What kind?   Do they have to pay into that?  Are any family members also eligible?

Mr. Answer Person says: "As part of the approval of the Winneshiek County 2014-2015 budget, county supervisor salaries were set at $29,504 a year.  County Board chair John Logsdon is paid $757 extra for the additional work he does as chairman.

But there are other benefits to the job.  Like all county employees, supervisors qualify for the IPERS program, with 9 percent of their salary contributed to the retirement fund.  Supervisors also qualify for health insurance, as do all other county employees.  They receive a $655 per month credit towards health insurance costs--a credit they can apply to any health insurance plan they want with the understanding that they will pay all costs over and above $655 a month.  Finally, county supervisors are reimbursed for travel costs incurred when traveling outside Winneshiek County.

One final note: Many people see the county supervisors spend three or four hours Monday mornings and say "They get paid pretty well for a part-time job."   But just like a TV news anchor does a lot of work behind the scenes, Winneshiek County supervisors put in hours and hours that the public doesn't observe--either in the form of other governmental meetings they must attend or in doing research and handling citizen questions and complaints.  So before you start thinking, "I'd like to earn $750 a week for three hours of meetings," realize that it isn't anywhere close to that situation.