As the new City Council President and Mayor of Lynn, we have been excited to take office and start working together to tackle the difficult but important issues facing the City. One of those difficult but important issues, highlighted in conversations with the previous Administration during the transition, that we have decided to tackle right away has to do with hiring.
The City’s residency requirement is causing problems for City hiring. We are asking the Lynn City Council to approve a home rule petition that would eliminate this requirement.
The City’s largest unions are already exempt — Lynn teachers by statute and Lynn police officers and firefighters by contract as enabled by statute (by contract, firefighters must live within 20 miles of city limits for public safety reasons).
The Personnel Department estimates that this change would affect approximately 564 employees out of a total of approximately 2,900 city and school employees, or about 20 percent of employees. (Keep in mind that about 71 percent of all city and school employees are police officers, firefighters, or teachers, who are already exempt from residency.)
First, the most important reason why this change needs to be made is that the City is struggling to hire in positions with specialized skills.
For example, this is true for city electrical inspectors and plumbing inspectors. Difficulty hiring is a national problem. It is a particular challenge in Lynn because of residency. When we can’t find these high-demand skills in a Lynn resident, we are forced to make do without or to contract with vendors. This ultimately drives up costs.
Second, the residency requirement is difficult to enforce. This has created a situation where the rule is not being applied equally across the board. This is unfair to city workers who are choosing to comply because they are aware of the rule and want to follow it. If we have a rule that we don’t feel comfortable enforcing, we should question whether it is a good rule to keep in place.
Third, the unions that are still subject to the residency requirement are smaller in number and tend to be paid less than the larger unions who have collectively bargained out of their residency requirement. This has created the inequity of our lower-paid employees being stuck in living situations because of the high prices and limited supply of housing.
Fourth, responding to a question from one of the Councilors and consulting with the City’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, we have come to believe this change would be helpful to our goal of improving diversity in hiring. When we have positions for which we do not have qualified applicants who live in Lynn, there would be a larger pool of candidates of color to draw from. For example, a person of color who grew up in Lynn and had moved elsewhere due to rent costs or moving for college but wanted to continue to contribute to their hometown by becoming a city employee.
Additionally, having the most qualified diverse workforce that represents our community is one of the most important factors as this allows for diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts to become normative and integrated into our daily practices. Currently, our workforce still does not reflect our city and eliminating the residency requirement can certainly help push forward efforts to recruit outside of our regular sphere.
Residency is a requirement in the City’s Charter. There are two ways to change the Charter: home rule petition and ballot referendum. Both are equally valid ways according to the Massachusetts State Constitution, which dictates how city charters can be changed. The advantage of the home rule petition is that we could act now while a ballot referendum could take years.
When city workers are residents, it’s a win for everyone. Employees bring their community perspective to work with them. Their salaries are spent in the City.
Removing the residency requirement doesn’t mean that we don’t want those jobs to go to Lynn residents when we have the right candidates. Going forward, we could still give a preference to Lynn residents in hiring.
While this is a change, we believe it is in the best interest of the City going forward. We will be presenting this change to the City Council at Tuesday’s meeting.
Jared Nicholson is the Mayor of Lynn and Jay Walsh is President of the City Council.
