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The city of Independence is one of just a handful of municipalities in the Kansas City area delivering electricity to its residents. However, running a municipal electric utility isn’t cheap, and it shows in the city’s latest payroll data.

About half of the city’s 50 highest-paid employees work for Independence Power & Light. (According to the American Public Power Association, Gardner, Harrisonville, Larned and Kansas City, Kansas, are the area’s other public power utilities.)

As of January, Independence had about 970 full-time-equivalent employees, making it the 33rd-biggest public-sector employer in the Kansas City area.

According to the 2020 Census, the city had a population of 123,028, making it the fifth-most populous city in Missouri as well as the fifth largest in the metro.

Check out the gallery below to see some of highest-paid Independence employees.

  • Photo by Adam Vogler/Kansas City Business Journal
  • Photo by Adam Vogler/Kansas City Business Journal
  • Photo by Adam Vogler/Kansas City Business Journal

Independence has about 7.9 FTE employees per 1,000 residents, which is among the highest figures encountered among area municipalities during the the Kansas City Business Journal‘s research.

The top end of the city’s payroll includes about 50 workers whose earnings topped $145,000 during the most recent fiscal year.