Pine Bluff Mayor Debe Hollingsworth said she will veto an ordinance passed by the City Council on Monday requiring all city department heads to live in Pine Bluff.
Hollingsworth said the ordinance would limit the applicant pool and could prevent the city from hiring the most qualified people for those jobs. She said people who live outside the city limits wouldn't want to sell their homes and move just to take a job with the city.
"It just doesn't make sense," Hollingsworth said Tuesday. "I'm going to veto it, of course. I'll do it sometime this week."
Alderman Steven Mays, who proposed the ordinance, disagrees with the mayor.
"I feel the mayor is wrong for vetoing it," he said Tuesday. "The reason that I sponsored that ordinance is we need our department heads within our city, living among the people that are paying their salaries and close to the people they work for. They need to know them on a first-name basis, and we're not getting that now."
The ordinance passed by a vote of 5-3 Monday. To override the mayor's veto, the City Council would need six votes. If not for the veto, the ordinance would take effect Jan. 1. Current department heads would be exempt from the new law.
Mays said he knows he doesn't have the votes to override the veto. But on Jan. 1 the city will have a new mayor and three new council members. Hollingsworth lost to Shirley Washington in the Democratic primary runoff election in March.
"I can bring it back whenever I want to," Mays said. "I'm in authority to do that. We have to start moving forward. Her last day is Dec. 31, and we're just trying to start a new direction and a new future for the city of Pine Bluff."
Mays said Pine Bluff has about a dozen department heads, and he believes about half of them live outside the city.
Mays has brought up similar proposals twice before. In 2013, the City Council passed one of his proposals, which became Ordinance No. 6446 and required department heads to live within 12 miles of city limits. Hollingsworth didn't attempt to veto that ordinance.
"I was fine with that," she said Tuesday.
But last year, Mays proposed an ordinance that would require all city employees to live within the city limits, and Hollingsworth vetoed that one.
"Society is so mobile," Hollingsworth said. "The commute to where you work is nothing anymore. ... Families are going to live around families. It takes a village."
Pine Bluff has lost population in recent years -- from 55,034 in 2000 to an estimated 44,712 in 2015 -- and local politicians often talk about efforts to revitalize the city.
According to the ordinance that passed Monday, the presence of department heads living in Pine Bluff and earning a good salary would increase economic activity in the city.
Don Zimmerman, executive director of the Arkansas Municipal League, said several Arkansas cities have ordinances that require department heads to live within the city limits.
Zimmerman said there is a theory that people have more of an interest in the town they call home. There is less commuting, and people feel safer when the police chief and fire chief live in town, he said.
"It's more of a pride-in-ownership thing," Zimmerman said.
"I don't think what Pine Bluff did is highly unusual or anything," Zimmerman said. "There are some arguments to be made for these residency provisions. I think the one Pine Bluff did was relatively mild."
When asked if Hollingsworth should reconsider her veto, Zimmerman said, "She knows more about the local situation than I do, I guess. I don't see that it's a bad ordinance at all, or a bad policy. I would think that she might take a second look at this one as opposed to the one she vetoed last year. But this one makes pretty good sense."
Zimmerman said state law requires city managers and city administrators to live in cities that have those forms of government. The Arkansas cities with city-manager forms of government are Arkadelphia, Hope, Hot Springs, Little Rock and Texarkana. The only Arkansas cities with city-administrator forms of government are Barling, Fort Smith and Siloam Springs.
Earlier this month, the Little Rock city board turned down a proposal that would have required new police officers to live in the city. It was the second consecutive year the board rejected the proposal.
Metro on 09/21/2016