PORTSMOUTH — The salaries paid public employees are meaningful only in context, says Town Administrator Robert G. Driscoll.

And he says that frame of reference comes from the going rates for all labor in the area — in the private as well as the public sector — as well as the regional cost of living.

The Providence Journal collected municipal payroll figures for 2006 that concluded the average salary for municipal employees here that year was $61,033.

But for a variety of reasons, Driscoll says, that figure is not representative.

Far more typical is the median pay — the midpoint in the salary scale — which was $46,700 in 2006, according to Driscoll.

In the schools, the average salary for a full-time employee was about $48,147, according to figures adjusted downward by The Journal after consultation with Schools Supt. Susan F. Lusi.

Meanwhile, the average annual wage for all Rhode Island workers in 2006 was $40,435, according to statistics compiled by the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training.

And the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released figures that say that the average compensation for all occupations in the Providence-Fall River-Warwick metropolitan area was 8 percent higher than the national average in 2006 — in a four-way tie with Chicago, Minneapolis and San Diego for ninth highest in the country.

The national and state labor statistics add detail to the general observation that salaries tend to be higher in the Northeast because the cost of living is higher, Driscoll said.

In his tenure of nearly two decades as Portsmouth’s town administrator, he recalled one candidate for superintendent of schools who turned down the job offer because she could not afford to move to Rhode Island from Maine.

The median assessed property valuation — currently at $299,800 — is about six times Driscoll’s figure for the median municipal salary. (The average purchase price of a home, which is based on recent sales, is even higher.)

The same 6-to-1 ratio holds true, roughly, for the adjusted average School Department salary, which is only a couple of thousand dollars higher than Driscoll’s median figure of $46,700 for the typical employee.

It was incorrectly stated in an article in yesterday’s Journal that the average School Department salary in Portsmouth was much higher than that in the Newport schools, which The Journal averaged at $54,143.

Lusi, the school superintendent here, said last week that The Journal’s average figure originally was skewed too high, at $64,852, because the total payroll for 2006 was divided by a number of employees that was too low.

According to figures provided by Lusi, there are a total of 374 full-time equivalent positions in the School Department payroll, including special education teachers and aides employed by a regional special education school district, and part-time clerks and bus monitors.

The Journal last week reported that Portsmouth had a total of 278 full-time equivalent positions.

And Driscoll said The Journal’s population figure, listed at 17,011, does not reflect the fact that town services stretch to cover a seasonal populace that peaks at about 22,000 in the summer.

He said the cost of public employees is inherently higher on Prudence Island, where a two-man team is needed to handle the work. There, the winter population is barely 200, swelling to 2,000 in the summer.

By comparison, 12 public works employees serve the rest of the town, a little more than 17,000 people.

Meanwhile, the municipal payroll for 2006 reflected some unusual expenses, including a total of $60,000 in retirement packages for chiefs of the Police and Fire departments, who stepped down within a month of each other.

The one-time payments covered unused sick time and vacation time due the chiefs by contract, Driscoll said.

In addition, 2006 saw some unusual police overtime expenses, including $42,000 for policing Prudence Island as a stop-gap measure after of an unexpected ruling that police officers lacked the authority to carry firearms and make arrests unless they had graduated from the municipal police academy, Driscoll said.

While the municipal payroll for 2006 totaled about $6.8 million, according to figures analyzed by The Journal, Driscoll and finance director David P. Faucher said that only two-thirds of that sum was supported by property tax revenue, with the other third coming from other sources.

Similarly, the property tax paid for about two-thirds of all School Department salaries, which totaled slightly over $18 million in 2006, Faucher said.

Lusi offered average salaries in three categories: administrators, $87,701; teachers, $57,029; and support staff, $28,743.

She noted that all Portsmouth’s schools are high-performing, and yet the overall per-pupil costs are lower than all but two Rhode Island school districts, according to figures kept by the state Department of Education. THE PUBLIC PAYROLL: EAST BAY

Payroll costs are by far the biggest item in the budgets of cities and towns. In the East Bay region, pay for municipal employees totaled more than $94 million, according to reports supplied to The Journal for each community for the calendar year 2006. The money for salaries came from local taxes, along with fees, grants and other sources.

In every community except for Newport, more money is spent on schools than on nonschool functions such as police and fire protection and public works.

The median household income offers a possible measure of the citizens’ ability to pay their municipal workers.

POPULATION is from 2006 U.S. Census estimates. MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME is from 2000 Census, adjusted for 17 percent inflation from 2000 to 2006. SCHOOL and NONSCHOOL PAYROLLS were compiled by the Journal from 2006 figures. SCHOOL FTEs are from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for 2005-06 school year and are a total of teachers and staff. Portsmouth figures have been updated from previously published charts after consultation with the school department. NONSCHOOL FTEs are from the state Office of Municipal Affairs for 2007 fiscal year. (FTEs are calculated with a full-time employee counting as one and a part-time worker counting as a fraction of one, depending on how many hours he or she works.)

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL

gmacris@projo.com