Members of the Little Rock Board of Directors at a meeting today are scheduled to take up a measure that would require new police officers and firefighters to reside within Pulaski County as a condition of employment.
The proposed ordinance, sponsored by City Director Ken Richardson, the board's Ward 2 representative, follows unsuccessful efforts in recent years to require new police officers to live within city limits.
Officers and firefighters who are currently employed and live outside the county would be grandfathered in, according to the text of Richardson's measure.
First responders who are hired following the effective date of the ordinance would have 90 days after they accepted their job offers to relocate within the boundaries of Pulaski County.
New employees who initially demonstrate compliance with the ordinance but later move outside Pulaski County would become "ineligible for continued employment," according to the measure.
Individuals who do not comply could face just-cause termination, the draft ordinance says.
At today's meeting, if there is adequate support for the proposal, the city board could vote to advance it to a third and final reading.
Alternatively, board members could choose to take no action after the ordinance is read for the first time. Ordinances must get three readings before they can be voted on for adoption.
In addition to the officers and firefighters who are already employed on the effective date of the measure, the ordinance would not apply to individuals required to live outside the county because of their approved participation in a joint task force or agency with a state or federal entity.
It would also not apply to those first responders who are already working for Little Rock when the ordinance is enacted and who are later promoted or transferred to a different position.
Pulaski County encompasses Little Rock as well as nearby cities like North Little Rock, Maumelle, Sherwood and Jacksonville. Cities like Cabot, Bryant, Benton and Conway fall outside Pulaski County's boundaries.
With the exception of department directors and assistant directors, there is no existing residency requirement for Little Rock employees to live within city limits. However, the city does offer certain incentives to new, full-time employees who move to the city to buy a home or rent an apartment.
[DOCUMENT: Ordinance » arkansasonline.com/112ordinance/]
As long as they meet certain conditions -- including a requirement that says new hires must remain employed with the city for a period of at least two years -- individuals who buy homes are eligible for $5,000 taxable incentive payments, while new hires who sign one-year leases on rental units are eligible for $2,500.
Little Rock police recruits who complete the police academy and remain employed with the city's Police Department for at least two years are eligible for $5,000 cash payments, according to information provided Monday by Little Rock Human Resources Director Stacey Witherell.
New firefighters do not receive hiring bonuses, Witherell indicated via email.
At a recent news conference on initiatives to be paid for with federal stimulus dollars, Mayor Frank Scott Jr. indicated he wants to double the police recruiting bonus to $10,000 and increase officers' pay in next year's budget.
Little Rock municipal departments have struggled to fill vacant positions lately amid a tumultuous labor market.
In the period since September 2020, the city's count of vacant positions that are authorized in the general fund has climbed to about 170, according to a presentation Little Rock Finance Director Sara Lenehan delivered to the city board last week.
According to slides shown to the board, as of June, there were 172 vacant positions authorized in the city's general fund. Additionally, 44 uniformed police positions -- 42 officers and two sergeants -- were vacant as of the last payroll period in June.
Residency measures specific to the Police Department have gone down in defeat at the city board before.
In 2015, the board rejected in a 6-4 vote a proposal from then-City Director Erma Hendrix of Ward 1 that would have required new police officers to live in Little Rock.
Another version of the ordinance was defeated the following year in a 6-3 decision, with one city director absent, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported at the time. However, during the same meeting in 2016, the board approved the present-day incentive structure for new municipal employees who choose to relocate to Little Rock.
City Manager Bruce Moore had proposed the new incentives, the Democrat-Gazette reported.
Hendrix died in September at age 91. Last month, the board appointed Virgil L. Miller Jr. to finish out her term.
Richardson supported Hendrix's version of the residency requirement during those contested decisions.
As more of his colleagues on the board express a desire to have the Police Department incorporate community-oriented policing, Richardson said he believes the strategy will be easier to implement if "the police officers are part of the community that they're policing."
He suggested that by expanding the boundaries laid out in the ordinance from the city to the county, his version might garner the support of more of his fellow board members.
In a phone interview Monday, Richardson described the proposal as the means by which he is "really trying to pay homage to Director Hendrix and her service and her willingness, her desire, to make that a reality for our community."
He noted that former Little Rock police chief Kenton Buckner, who went on to become chief of police in Syracuse, N.Y., had opposed Hendrix's residency proposal.
Nevertheless, city officials in Syracuse recently approved a contract expenditure that requires new police recruits to live in the city for at least their first five years, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard.
When asked if he had received information on how many police officers and firefighters currently reside outside Pulaski County, Richardson said he had not.
CORRECTION: Department directors and assistant directors for the city of Little Rock must live in the city. An earlier version of this article gave an incomplete description of Little Rock’s residency requirements for municipal employees.