Joliet residency rule for city employees examined after firefighters contract

Joliet is loosening its residency requirement for city employees, but many workers already live outside the city limits.

The City Council last week approved a firefighters contract that lifted a rule requiring them to live inside the city.

“This isn’t just about where firefighters will live,” Joliet resident Damon Zdunich told City Council last week before its vote. “It’s about the health and future of the city.”

Zdunich’s comments reflected a long-held position that city workers should live in the city where taxpayers fund their paychecks.

But this is not the first time the city has lifted its residency requirement.

In 2009, the city eliminated the residency requirement for all employees in exchange for health insurance concessions from the unions.

The residency rule was put back into union contracts in 2016 in exchange for a generous health insurance package that assured workers would get the same coverage deal until 2030.

But the rule applied only to union workers and only to those hired after the new contracts were approved, meaning many city workers could continue to live and move outside of Joliet.

The 2016 agreement faced only a couple of opponents questioning how the city could commit to the same coverage plan for 14 years in the volatile health insurance market.

Its approval reinstated the residency requirement that the city now is lifting while health insurance coverage remains frozen at 2016 rates.

Mayor Terry D’Arcy last week voiced dissatisfaction with the city’s commitment to “a 14-year deal,” which was done under the previous mayor and is something D’Arcy said is unheard of in union negotiations.

D’Arcy joined council members in voting unanimously for the firefighters contract, saying the residency rule is making it difficult to attract city employees.

D’Arcy said the low inventory of housing in Joliet makes it hard for new workers to move into the city.

The concept that hiring city workers is challenging raised some eyebrows, given that the city provides what one council member described as “top-tier jobs.”

City employees typically are paid more than $100,000 a year, although Council Member Sherri Reardon noted they don’t start at that pay.

“They’re not coming in at a large salary,” Reardon said. “It’s not easy to move a young couple into the city when you are starting a job.”

Unlike in 2009 and in 2016, when city management used the residency requirement as a bargaining chip to get what they wanted, managers now are pushing to lift the requirement and saying it’s needed to attract workers.

Firefighters Local 44, the union representing rank-and-file firefighters, will get 2.5 pay increases for four years along with the lifting of the residency requirement and continued health coverage under 2016 standards.

The contract is the first of six being negotiated with the city unions.

The elimination of the residency requirement is likely to be in the other contracts.

Jim Anderson, president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 440, said the union is not even seeking removal of the residency requirement, which he called “a good idea” but which city management wants to end.

“If you work for the city, you earn your money from the city,” Anderson said. “You should spend your money in the city and pay your taxes in the city. It just makes sense.”

The same thinking kept a residency requirement in Joliet for decades.

City officials before lifting the requirement in 2009 noted that similar municipal employment residency rules had been overturned in court challenges elsewhere.

Even so, the Joliet residency requirement had been in place since at least 1961, according to what city officials had been able to trace at the time.

Whether it means much to city residents is unclear.

The city put an advisory referendum on the ballot in 1994 asking if the residency requirement should be dropped. Joliet voters sided with keeping it in place but only by a margin of three votes.