NEW BEDFORD — The city has struggled the last few years to hire a number of department heads, managers and other specialists, running each time into the same obstacle: applicants living out of town had to agree to move to New Bedford, or take a 10% pay cut. Mayor Jon Mitchell has seen enough of this, and wants the council to drop the requirement so the city can better compete with other municipalities for executive talent.
“New Bedford residents deserve the best candidates city government can hire,” Mitchell wrote in a letter to city councilors before their Jan. 11 meeting, when they’re scheduled to take up the issue. “High quality professionals, especially those who already have significant experience in their field, are often already established in homes elsewhere when they apply to work for the City. Because they are unable to uproot their families and move to New Bedford or accept a pay cut, they frequently cannot afford to accept employment with the City.”
Mitchell, who mentioned this subject in his inaugural address last week, said he didn’t like this residency rule from the start. When the council adopted the ordinance in November 2020, he vetoed it, sending a three-page letter to the council explaining why. The council voted 10-1 in January 2021 to override the veto.
At-large Councilor Linda Morad, who served as council president last year, said in an interview Tuesday that she has been urging Mitchell for months to drop the residency requirement for all employees, saying there’s support on the council to do it. She said the mayor resisted, but shortly before his inauguration on Jan. 1 sent her an email saying he agreed to the change for non-union employees.
Mayor Mitchell declined to comment on any discussions he had with Morad, said his spokesman, Jonathan Darling.
Armed with a few years of hindsight, Mitchell has sent the council another letter requesting that the residency rule — which applies to 150 non-union positions — be repealed and sizing up how it’s working. By his account, it’s been a problem from the start.
The current requirement, Mitchell wrote in his letter of Jan. 3, “has not achieved the results intended at the time it was passed. In fact, since its enactment three years ago, the requirement has proven a major obstacle to the ability of the administration to successfully attract and hire qualified candidates to several critical department head positions, as well as discouraging interest in open management positions across city government.”
As far as his administration has been able to tell, Mitchell said “no other municipal government in the nation has adopted a non-resident ‘pay penalty’ like that presently in place in New Bedford.”
Mitchell specifically mentioned the positions of New Bedford chief financial officer, auditor, assistant to the board of assessors, and treasurer that remained unfilled for years “as non-resident candidates withdrew or declined to apply based on residency-related considerations.”
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The residency rule held up hiring an associate city solicitor for two years and is now an impediment in hiring a successor for the departing human resources/personnel director, Mitchell wrote.
The ordinance also specifically does not allow the residency exemption and 10% penalty for the city planner, director of human resources, public health director, purchasing director, first assistant city solicitor, and parking supervisor.
The residency requirement does not apply for employees in this non-union group who have worked for the city for at least 10 years.
Employee residency requirements did not start with the ordinance adopted by the council in 2020. Such rules covering all city employees have been in place since 1977.
Residency requirements for union employees have been part of contract negotiations with the four bargaining units. Their work rules and pay are not set by the council, except for the council vote on budget allocations for each contract. The requirements for non-union employees are set by the administration and the council by ordinance.
At the moment, there are about 210 people in the 150 so-called “Unit C” non-union positions covered by the ordinance Mitchell wants to repeal.
The ordinance took the place of a system that allowed non-union employees to ask the administration for waivers from the requirement based on their specific circ*mstances, said Human Resources Director Judith Keating. Those requests were subject to a two-thirds council vote for approval.
The council over the years ended up handling many such requests every year, especially as the waivers, if granted, were subject to annual renewals. There were so many requests that the council eventually established a special Committee on Waivers of Residency. Its mission was to figure out what to do about the residency policy.
Morad, who was chair of that committee, said the ordinance adopted in 2020 arose from that committee’s work. She said the intention was to make residency requirements more fair, as it appeared that Mitchell was “picking and choosing” whose waiver request he would advance to the council.
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She recalled that one employee who had been with the city about 20 years could not get their waiver request sent to the council. Another, a Fairhaven resident just starting work with the city, had their request sent and approved.
“It was not fair and equitable,” Morad said.
The mayor’s decisions on these waiver requests were “not arbitrary, he was not picking and choosing,” said Darling, Mitchell’s spokesman. He said the mayor established a policy on how those requests would be handled and was following it.
Running just over two pages, the policy drafted in 2019 says waivers are to be granted if they are found to be in the city’s “best interest,” and spells out how that is to be decided, with examples of specific situations.
Newly elected Ward 5 Councilor Joe Lopes, who represented Ward 6 at the time and was a member of the waivers committee, recalled in an interview that the residency ordinance was meant to help deal with mounting waiver requests by making clear up front the cost of opting out of the residency requirement. The 10% pay figure was set in light of average property tax bills for the city.
Lopes, who was council president when the ordinance was adopted and voted for it at the time, would not commit to a position on it now. He said “I’m looking forward to a discussion” about dropping the 10% pay-cut rule.
Councilor-at-Large Ian Abreu said that while he voted for the ordinance in 2020, his view has changed along with labor market conditions.
“Things have shifted since COVID,” Abreu said, referring to the more competitive labor market that has emerged since the pandemic. “I support the mayor.”
Morad said she would consider supporting repeal of the 10% rule, so long as residency requirements are ended for all employees, including union members.
Darling said work rules for union members are matters for contract negotiations. The mayor would not take a public position on that, he said.
Email reporter Arthur Hirsch at ahirsch@newbedfordlight.org.
