Council on a residency requirement

on items 10a and 10b:
Request City Manager provide City Council with an employment chart by department that reveals the city or town of residence for those employees at the time of being hired in Fiscal 2010, 2011 and 2012 as compared with those same employees' city or town of residence for the current fiscal year. (Petty, O'Brien)
Request City Manager recommend to City Council an expansion of the residency provisions in the existing city ordinances that prospectively enhances Worcester residency for future non-represented and represented City of Worcester employees noting in said report the various collective bargaining units with whom negotiations will be required before enactment. (Petty, O'Brien)

Petty: talked about many times in the past
city I was born in, I was raised here, live here
"a great city...over 180,000 people live here...when we give jobs out, the people we give jobs to, should live here in the city"
40% don't live here in the city
"millions of dollars walk out of here every week"
"why not...people who work here will see the issues we see here every day.."
other cities have addressed it
"I know the argument always is, 'you're going to lose out with people coming here.' I think people here are good people"
"shouldn't be an issue at all"
"let's talk about the salaries that we give...middle class salaries, what are we trying to keep? Middle class people"
O'Brien: how can we get more people to live here in the city? It's always been a challenge
in the past it's been said it's about union contracts
second most resident group is non-represented city employees
"why we can't, when we hire those folks, require them to live here int eh city of Worcester"
CM O'Brien: run through which employees can be required to live here
"vast majority of our employees are union represented...for fairness and equity reasons"
unions said that they would not even consider it
CM O'Brien "bringing a group back because I can do it is a little different than doing it because I should do it"
O'Brien: not asking people who already work here to move, but asking new hires to live here
"it's good enough for everyone around this room; it should be good enough for people who are working for us"
Palmieri: we need the city solicitor "to suggest to us that it can be done"
"is this realistic and practical to move this forward?"
Russell: believe we should try to give preference to those who live in Worcester for jobs
would not be right to go back to anyone who already works here to "mandate them to move back to Worcester"
remember sitting here when one of the CDC's spoke of the cost of redeveloping
"prepared to propose to this Council tonight...to give incentives to employees to live in Worcester"
HUD program cited
as he watched the firefighters graduated he wondered 'where will these people be moving?'
loan forgiven after a certain number of years of city employment
offer some incentives to them
Toomey: "I too feel very strongly"
wants a marketing component involved in this
"sometimes we need to take a step back and take our head out of the game"
"ahead of the game in so many respects"
Lukes: "a little more flexible on this"
have looked at this through Civil Service rules
we've been more serious about regional models...we haven't included the school department in this discussion
"to get a major concession like this, we have to pay for this concession" with the union