The Springfield City Council approved first steps of a new proposal that extends the residency requirement for most new municiapl employees from one year to two years during its Dec. 16 meeting. The council hopes to host a final vote on the matter in January.
Photo credit: Focus Springfield
SPRINGFIELD — The City Council is currently discussing a proposal that would give most new municipal employees two years to relocate to Springfield instead of the one year that is currently set in place.
The proposal, which is sponsored by City Council President Michael Fenton and City Councilor Victor Davila, has raised some questions and concerns from a few councilors across the two meetings in December when this amendment was discussed.
Davila said during the Dec. 9 regular meeting that the proposal is in response to the notion that department heads are having a tough time retaining new employees because of the current residency rule, which requires new municipal employees to have one year to move to Springfield after their hire date, or else they are terminated by the city.
By extending it to two years, the goal would be to ease that burden on many new municipal employees looking for homes in Springfield.
“Given the new state of the housing market in Springfield, it is, in my opinion, wise to expand this to two years, which is what the ordinance amendment is looking for, so that people moving into the city will now have two years to find appropriate housing,” Davila said.
According to City Solicitor Stephen Buoniconti, the city of Springfield is currently facing an economic situation that it does not have the tools to address and stated that the city is also having trouble attracting qualified people to fill positions.
He added that there are at least two valuable employees that have not moved into Springfield and are reaching the one-year expiration date, which is why there is an urgency from the city to pass the new ordinance
According to Buoniconti, this new proposal also includes language that allows any municipal employee hired on or after Sept. 1, 2023, to be impacted by the proposal if passed.
“We’re asking to go retroactively back because some of those individuals are about to expire or almost may have expired upon the time we have filed this and upon passage,” Buoniconti said. “And so, we wanted to just be clear about the retroactivity, and we went back a little bit longer to be sure to capture some of those individuals.”
The original goal was to vote on the new proposal before the year is out, but some councilors felt that more information was needed while others wished the proposal came in front of the council sooner.
After 45 minutes of debate during the Dec. 9 meeting, no vote was taken on the matter because the council pushed up against its 10 p.m. cutoff time for its meetings.
Dec. 16 meeting
During its Dec. 16 regular meeting, the council discussed the new residency requirement further and added an amendment proposed by City Councilor Jose Delgado that puts a three-year sunset clause on the proposed requirement.
The clause essentially means that the 24-month residency requirement, if passed, would be in effect until Sept. 1, 2026, and then the ordinance would revert back to the current one-year requirement, and the council would revisit to see which requirement is more necessary.
Delgado presented this amendment because he believes that the city’s current economic climate could always evolve over time. During the Dec. 9 meeting, he mentioned how Springfield’s current situation is a “snapshot in time.”
“I think we could be looking at, you know, how we can support the city and hiring people, but I don’t want to make a permanent decision on something that’s not always going to be the case,” Delgado said.
City Councilor Zaida Govan agreed with Delgado’s clause and with the new 24-month proposal, citing the “ridiculousness” of the housing market right now as reason to support both.
“I think that giving people enough time to be able to move into the city is something that we should be doing,” Govan said.
The majority of the council voted in favor of Delgado’s clause and for passing the first steps of the overall proposal, but some councilors still raised concerns and questions about the residency requirement change and wanted to see more discussion before officially passing the new ordinance.
City Councilor Maria Perez, who voted against the proposal’s first steps, felt that the residency requirement should go to a committee for more discussion because she had questions surrounding a 2021 ruling by a Hampden Superior Court judge that forced the city to enforce residency after decades of failing to do so.
She also raised concerns about the amount of people who have resigned because of the one-year rule over the past five years, which she said amounted to 46 city employees.
“Why are we making an amendment to the matter which I was, again, not aware of when I’m not having all the discussions and concerns that I wanted to present in the committee?” Perez said.
Later in the meeting, Buoniconti responded to Perez’s inquiry about the 2021 ruling by saying that that decision does not invalidate the city’s current residential requirement or the council’s new proposal.
“This amendment that’s being proposed this evening, whether it be on the first draft from last week or the amended version this evening, is not in violation of any prior court decision and is still within the authority of the council to make the decision or not,” Buoniconti said.
City Councilor Sean Curran also posed logistical questions surrounding the new proposal. He asked during the meeting if changing the residency requirement would open litigation for the city, since at least one municipal employee was terminated in recent years for not following the one-year requirement.
City Councilor Ken Shea, an attorney, responded by saying that any event that happened before the drafting of this new proposal would not create litigation.
“What happened in the past is not going to create something because at the time that they were terminated, they did not have the right that you’re going to grant now,” Shea said.
The council ultimately voted 10-3 in favor of passing the first steps of the 24-month ordinance with Delgado’s clause in place. They plan to discuss it again at a January meeting before taking a final vote.
