Three years after failing to convince charter revisers to allow city department heads to live outside of New Haven, Mayor Justin Elicker is now asking alders to reconsider on a case-by-case basis. That request is part of a communication on the agenda for Monday’s full Board of Alders meeting. Click here to read the proposal in full. The proposal was submitted to the full board not by Elicker, but by Board of Alders Majority Leader Richard Furlow. “This amendment preserves residency requirements as the general rule while establishing a limited, case-specific exception process for new appointments in appropriate circumstances,” Furlow wrote in a letter in support of the proposal. “The proposal maintains Board [of Alders] oversight through written mayoral recommendation, Personnel Director review, and final Board approval. It also clarifies the continuing residency requirement applicable to incumbent coordinator exceptions.” The proposal must now head to an aldermanic committee for review and a public hearing before returning to the full Board of Alders for a potential final vote. Elicker and Furlow both told the Independent on Monday that the mayor submitted draft language to the alders for review, and that Furlow amended that version before passing along a formal proposal to his local legislative colleagues. Under the proposed ordinance amendment, the mayor would be able to request and the alders would be able to grant a “case-specific” exception to the residency requirement for “a specific individual newly appointed to a coordinator or department head position.” That “newly appointed” language appears to exclude existing city department heads from benefiting from this proposal. (The proposal does, however, maintain a process by which incumbent coordinators — like the chief administrative officer — can receive a residency-requirement waiver, building off of a similar law approved by the alders in 2024.) This new proposal details a number of criteria that the city’s personnel director must review before finding that the mayor can submit to the alders a residency-requirement-waiver request for a newly appointed city department head. Those criteria include “whether comparably qualified resident candidates were not reasonably available through the recruitment process,” “whether strict application of the residency requirement would significantly affect the City’s ability to recruit or retain a qualified candidate necessary to serve the public interest,” and/or “whether the appointee has demonstrated that compliance with the residency requirement would impose a substantial hardship” because, say, they would have to bear the cost of “maintaining multiple residences for the purpose of complying with the requirements of the Charter”. Article II, Sec. 12 of the City Charter states that “Every Appointed Public Official shall be an Elector” of New Haven, unless otherwise permitted by law. It also states the city department heads and their deputies must become city “electors” within six months of their appointments. This new proposal comes roughly a month after Elicker first re-broached the idea of residency-requirement waivers for department heads at a City Hall press conference about his selection of Acting Police Chief David Zannelli to serve as the city’s next permanent chief. Zannelli, an 18-year New Haven Police Department (NHPD) veteran, currently lives in Stonington. Asked at that presser about whether or not he plans to move to New Haven per the City Charter’s residency requirement for police chiefs, Zannelli said he is “prepared to fulfill any requirement that is set for me.” The proposal also comes roughly three years after Elicker tried to include residency-requirement waivers for department heads in the city’s once-a-decade charter revision process in 2023. Ultimately, the Charter Revision Commission decided not to take up the mayor’s recommendation on that matter. “I think that people have seen the challenges that the residency requirements create and the opportunities we have to hire some very solid people if we don’t have residency requirements,” Elicker said on Monday when asked why he thinks he might be successful in securing support for residency-requirement waivers this time around when he was not successful during charter revision. Elicker said he is “really grateful for the collaboration with Majority Leader Furlow on presenting this to the alders.” He also said he’s hopeful that, “in this go around or in the future,” the alders will allow for residency-requirement waivers not just for newly appointed city department heads, but also for existing department heads. In a separate phone interview Monday, Furlow said that his amendments to the mayor’s proposal “made sure that the decision to do waivers” fell fully to the Board of Alders, and couldn’t be implemented without aldermanic support. Furlow said he feels comfortable submitting this version of the proposal to his colleagues on the Board of Alders to allow for a “very vigorous discussion [and] debate” about whether or not this is worth passing. “Let’s see what the public says,” he said. “That’s going to carry a lot of weight.” The post Residency-Requirement Waivers Proposed appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less