Residency-Requirement Waivers Established

by Laura Glesby

Department heads across City Hall can now request permission from the Board of Alders to live outside of New Haven.

On Monday night, the Board of Alders voted to institute a case-by-case waiver system to the city residency requirement that currently impacts appointed city officials.

The legislation paves the way for city employees such as newly appointed Police Chief David Zannelli and Acting Controller Michael Gormany, among others, to apply for waivers to continue living outside of New Haven. Zannelli (a Stonington resident) and Gormany (a Branford resident), each of whom has a long history of working in New Haven’s city government, would otherwise have had no way out of a requirement to relocate to the city within six months of their respective appointments.

Now, any city employee currently subject to a residency requirement will have the ability to seek out an exemption to live elsewhere within the state of Connecticut. A majority of city employees do not have to live in New Haven, but most department heads are required to live here.

The legislation approved by the alders on Monday is significantly broader than the proposal first put forward by Mayor Justin Elicker and Board of Alders Majority Leader Richard Furlow in April. That initial proposal sought a residency-requirement-waiver pathway for new department heads only. The version approved on Monday — in line with the amended proposal that made it out of the alders’ Legislation Committee in May — applies to all city officials currently subject to a residency requirement, and not just to new department heads.

Under the now-approved legislation, the mayor will have the ability to submit a written request to the city’s personnel director to review whether the employee in question meets “one or more” criteria, including whether “comparably qualified resident candidates were not reasonably available through the recruitment process” and whether the employee in question would face a “substantial hardship” by moving to New Haven. A “hardship” could include (but would not be limited to) having school-age children, facing economic costs to moving, and having particular medical needs, according to the ordinance.

After the personnel director’s review, the residency-requirement waiver would need a final approval from the Board of Alders. The waiver would only apply to the particular person requesting it, and could come with additional conditions imposed by the Board of Alders. The personnel director would also have to annually review and report to the alders whether the “substantial hardship” criteria continue to apply to the employee.

The ordinance amendment follows a pathway that alders created in 2024 for current city coordinators to seek out New Haven residency exemptions (a system proposed for the benefit of then-Chief Administrative Officer Regina Rush-Kittle). It also comes after the mayor tried and failed to include residency-requirement waivers for department heads in the 2023 charter revision process. As part of that process, however, charter revisers — and the voting public — signed off on moving residency requirements from the charter and into the city’s code of ordinances, thereby creating a potential pathway for alders to amend local law to allow department heads to live elsewhere.

Alders Richard Furlow and Anna Festa both ultimately spoke up in favor of the waiver system. Credit: Laura Glesby File Photo

Furlow advocated for the waiver system at Monday’s Board of Alders meeting.

“These updates will help the city attract talented, qualified candidates,” he said.

He clarified, “This is in no way implying that New Haven does not have qualified candidates. But we have seen, over the course of the last several years, the difficulty that the city has had in filling some of our high positions.”

East Rock Alder Anna Festa expressed torn feelings about the proposal, though she ultimately voted in favor of it.

“How do you get to know your community if you don’t live in it? And how do you support the mom and pop shops, the businesses in New Haven?” she asked. “So I hope whoever fills these positions understands that they have an obligation as well, if they live outside the city, to get to know the community.”

At the same time, Festa noted, “The city has become incredibly expensive to live in. Housing is limited. If you try to buy a house, you’re outbid by a developer or someone from the outside that’s paying cash, making it hard for even our own residents to purchase homes within the city that they want to live in.”

She added that she hopes the ordinance will make “promoting within the departments” more feasible for experienced city employees who don’t live within New Haven.

West Hills/West Rock Alder Honda Smith was the sole alder to speak out on the floor against creating a pathway out of residency requirements.

“We have 140,000 residents here in the City of New Haven,” said Smith. “And I’m not saying that the outsiders are not capable of doing it, but we do have residents here that are capable… These are our taxpayers.”

On Monday, 22 alders voted in favor of the waiver system, while two alders — Smith and Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller — voted against it.