Chief questions Waterloo firefighter residency policy
Treloar said the 10-mile residency requirement adopted in 2006 for "critical" municipal employees is hurting recruitment efforts and should be expanded to 60 miles.
"I feel our current residency policy is far too restrictive and is not in line with many other cities that we compete with for talented employees," Treloar said. "We feel that the policy restricts our talent pool for prospective employees and possibly the retention of those employees.
"I strongly believe
Treloar made the request to
While the policy is designed to ensure off-duty critical municipal employees are able to be called back quickly for emergency response, the issue also has political overtones.
Councilwoman
"I just think it's fair that if you're going to give people hefty wages -- you know competitively in
City employees shouldn't just "come in and service us like you get a flat tire on the highway and you've got to get somebody to come out and put air in the tire," she added.
Klein compiled statistics during the last budget process showing about 52 percent of of city employees actually live in
The current 10-mile radius allows employees to live in
Cities are prevented under
The law does not apply to noncivil service employees, which is why
A policy adopted in 1981 required those workers to live within a 30-minute drive of the city. It was revised in 2003 to a 20-mile radius of
Treloar said the stated reason for the
Mayor
"It's kind of like an insurance policy: You may not ever use it, but you darn well want to know that you have it just in case anything happens," Hart said. "There needs to be a balance to make sure we have folks here that could (respond)."
Council members agreed to form a committee to review other city policies and get input from other department heads on the residency requirements for their critical employees.
Meanwhile, Treloar suggested the city could use a carrot instead of a stick approach, possibly looking at incentives to lure new hires to live in town.
"I would love for all of our members to live within the city, but we do not need them to," he said.
"We encourage all our members to live within the city and we give them a hard sell at the time we hire them."
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