Future city employees will have to live inside Springfield under an ordinance passed Tuesday by the city council.
The controversial issue created a split among some unions, with police, fire and lineman unions opposing the measure and 15 other unions already adopting residency requirements in their contracts. The new ordinance also has potential to affect the city’s minority recruitment efforts when it takes effect next year.
Springfield Mayor Jim Langfelder proposed the ordinance, making good on a campaign promise and negotiating with several unions to gain support before bringing the idea to the city council.
The main bargaining units which have not agreed to a residency requirement are the unions covering city police officers, firefighters and linemen at City Water, Light and Power.
Springfield previously had a full residency requirement from 1976 to 2000, when the prior ordinance was repealed. A version of the ordinance remained in effect prior to Tuesday’s vote, requiring certain members of the mayor’s administration to live in the city.
As of June 1, 595 (42 percent) of the city’s 1,414 employees lived outside the city boundaries, according to the mayor’s office. That doesn’t include temporary workers and four regular employees whose places of residence could not be verified. The city’s data shows that nearly 58 percent of Springfield firefighters and 38 percent of police officers live outside the city boundaries.
The ordinance passed Tuesday requires all employees hired after Jan. 1, 2017, to live within the city limits or move here within 12 months of being hired. Existing employees who already live outside the city would not be required to move. The council voted to amend the mayor’s original proposal by creating a process for employees to obtain a waiver in case of hardship. Such employees would have to prove the hardship each year and face a public vote by the city council.
Voting in favor of the amended ordinance were Ward 2 Ald. Herman Senor, Ward 3 Ald. Doris Turner, Ward 4 Ald. John Fulgenzi, Ward 5 Ald. Andrew Proctor, Ward 7 Ald. Joe McMenamin and Ward 9 Ald. Jim Donelan. Four aldermen voted against the ordinance: Ward 1 Ald. Chuck Redpath, Ward 6 Ald. Cory Jobe, Ward 8 Ald. Kris Theilen and Ward 10 Ald. Ralph Hanauer.
Several people spoke regarding the ordinance prior to the vote just before 9 p.m., including residents of Springfield who work for the city, employees who live outside the city, past employees who chose to remain in Springfield, a former alderman and two union representatives with opposing views.
Ultimately, Langfelder’s insistence on not “watering down” his original plan prevailed, defeating two amendments that would have enlarged the allowable residency area – one to include all of Sangamon County and another to include a mile-and-a-half swath around the city boundaries.
A 2012 voter referendum showed Springfield residents favor a residency requirement 59 percent to 41 percent. More than 50,000 people weighed in on the question, and every ward except Ward 1 (Redpath) voted in support of residency. Ward 1 mostly covers the area south of Stevenson Drive and east of Sixth Street, including Lake Springfield and the University of Illinois Springfield.
However, Theilen and others cast doubt on the referendum results, claiming many residents didn’t know they were voting to exclude city employees from living in “holes in the donut” – the many small municipalities surrounded by or touching Springfield, such as Leland Grove, Jerome and Southern View.
Paul Moore is a former CWLP supervisor of 20 years and assistant business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 193, which represents 136 employees at CWLP. Moore says that includes 16 audio-visual inspectors and 120 electrical workers who are paid with revenue from the utility’s energy sales, not with tax dollars. Moore says that undercuts the argument that employees paid through taxes should live in the city.
“When there’s an outage, these crews come in at all hours of the night to restore power,” Moore said. “Not one single person asks, “Hey, does that lineman live in Springfield?”
Ernesto Johnson serves as co-chairman of the civic engagement task force with the Faith Coalition for the Common Good. A Springfield resident of 40 years, Johnson says the city’s police and fire presence used to be more visible when those employees all lived in the city, providing better relationships between public servants and the public. Johnson says the residency requirement will strengthen neighborhoods, create more job opportunities for Springfield residents and improve the city’s economy.
“Nobody’s telling you where to work; it’s just a job requirement,” he said. “You can still have your fishing cabin in the country, but you need to spend the majority of your time living in the city.”
Mostly unspoken in the debate over the residency requirement is how it might affect the city’s minority recruitment efforts. Data from the city show the proportion of non-white city employees is increasing, but the workforce remains mostly white. An employment audit released in April says that during 2015, just 150 of the city’s 1,421 workers at the time were non-white. That’s 10.5 percent, compared with Springfield’s non-white population of 24 percent.
The police and fire departments, along with CWLP, are among those with the lowest percentages of non-white employees. Combined, those three departments account for 1,055 workers, with just 89 non-white workers.
The city hasn’t examined the racial makeup among employees who live elsewhere, but with only 150 non-white city employees total, it’s clear that the majority of the nearly 600 workers who live outside the city are white.
Likewise, data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that the areas surrounding Springfield have significantly fewer non-white residents than the city itself. Capital Township, which has the same boundaries as Springfield, is 24 percent non-white, but the remaining townships in Sangamon County have on average 3.5 percent non-white residents.
Limiting city jobs to only those living within the city reduces the number of eligible white applicants and increases the percentage of non-white people in the pool of available workers. However, in an interview with Illinois Times prior to the vote, Hanauer in Ward 10 noted that the ordinance gives future employees up to 12 months to move, meaning the city could still hire people living outside the city.
“I just don’t agree with the logic that this helps the east side,” Hanauer said.
Arguments for and against the residency requirement
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At the most basic level, proponents of the residency requirement say it’s about reinvesting in the city that pays you. They say residency is merely a job requirement like a dress code, but it will have the effect of building up neighborhoods, creating better relationships between residents and public servants, keeping tax revenue circulating in the city’s economy, strengthening Springfield Public Schools and promoting pride in the city. Opponents – mainly police, firemen and linemen already employed by the city – say it’s a matter of freedom. They also pick apart the benefits touted by proponents and say the residency requirement may have unintended negative consequences.
The proponents note that the ordinance only applies to employees hired after Jan. 1, 2017, not those already hired. One current city employee, Josh Witkowski, opposed the ordinance because he currently lives in the city but would be banned from later moving elsewhere.
Education
Proponents posit that people who are paid well – as with city jobs – live in nice houses, which means increased property taxes for schools. And while the argument wasn’t specifically outlined, more middle-class families means a smaller proportion of low-income students, which makes the school district more attractive for other middle-class families considering a move to Springfield.
In response, opponents say all of the houses in the city already yield property taxes – a fact that doesn’t change no matter who lives in them. Opponents also point out that Springfield’s corporate boundaries include parts of other school districts, such as New Berlin and Pleasant Plains, so the residency requirement won’t necessarily mean a large batch of new students for Springfield Public Schools. Proponents turn that argument around, saying the city’s boundaries overlapping with different school districts means families still have choices about where to send their children.
Taxes
Proponents say employees whose salaries are funded with city taxes should keep that money in the city by living here. Opponents counter that sales tax is actually the largest revenue source for the city’s general fund, and sales tax comes from people living both inside and outside the city limits. Additionally, opponents note that linemen at CWLP are paid with revenue from the utility’s services, not from tax revenue. Proponents say property taxes are still the largest source of funding for the city’s pension system, which all employees get regardless of where they live or how their salaries are paid.
Applicant pools
Opponents of the residency requirement say it will decrease the number of people who apply for city jobs, making it difficult to find qualified employees. During debate on the ordinance, Paul Moore, assistant business manager for IBEW Local 193, said the linemen his union represents require training, and the pool of qualified people is already small. As older linemen retire, he said, there won’t be enough qualified young linemen to replace them if new hires have to live in the city. Mayor Jim Langfelder countered that the city already trains all of its employees. Brad Schaive, business manager for Laborers Local 477, noted that the last time the city interviewed 200 applicants for a handful of jobs, only five people were hired. “If you pay,” he said, “they will come – guaranteed.”
Contact Patrick Yeagle at pyeagle@illinoistimes.com.
CORRECTIONS: This article has been changed from the original story. Paul Moore’s title has been corrected from president to assistant business manager for IBEW 193. Additionally, the article originally stated IBEW represents 120 linemen. It has been corrected to reflect that not all of the 120 electrical workers IBEW represents at CWLP are linemen.
This article appears in Jun 23-29, 2016.
