Floodplain Management
Years Working in Floodplain Management
The questionnaire asked respondents how many years they had been working in the floodplain management field. The overall responses indicated that the median years of experience in the floodplain management field was approximately 9 years; the number of years for respondents from smaller communities appear to be lower than that threshold, while those from the largest communities typically had more than 10 years of experience in the field.
Hours Per Month Spent on Floodplain Management Activities
The questionnaire inquired about the monthly hours of staff time spent working on floodplain management in the previous year. Of the responding communities and counties, 194 had populations of less than 5,000 residents. Of this group, 86.0% of the respondents spent five or fewer hours per month on floodplain management activities. There are many possible explanations for this lack of engagement, including lack of staff, minimal flood risk, and marginal or no development within the community. With increasing community size, the percent of respondents who spend five or fewer hours per month decreases – for populations between 5,000 and 50,000, the percentage was 59.0%; and for communities with populations greater than 50,000, the percentage was 30.0%.
Reported Job Titles
Respondents were asked “which best describes your current job title?” The response rate to this question was 99.6%. The respondents were given eleven choices of a job title or asked to provide their job title if it was different from those on this list. A number of respondents indicated their job titles did not align with one of the choices. Of those who did identify with one of the titles, there were clear trends on certain job titles based on the community’s population. Clerks, elected officials, and city managers or administrators were commonly floodplain managers in small communities, but not in medium and large communities, where there were few to no floodplain managers with these job titles. Zoning, Code, or Building Officials were consistently a leading presence in all population ranges.
Floodplain Manager Salary Range
The questionnaire also inquired about respondents’ salaries. Given the wide range of job titles, experience, and educational backgrounds, respondents’ salaries varied quite a bit but were overall uniformly distributed over a wide range. When considering the population of a community, there was a distinct trend of lower salaries based upon a community’s population. The median salary for communities of 5,000 people or less was approximately $55,000, for a community between 5,000 and 50,000 fell between $70,001 to $85,000, and for a community greater than 50,000 fell between $100,00 to $120,000.