Residents from areas such as Greenville, Van Buren, Doniphan and Bernie will be eligible to become city of Poplar Bluff employees following a change Monday in residency policy.
City council members voted 5-2 to extend the residency requirements for city employees to areas in Missouri within 45 miles of the Butler County boundary. The new policy does not apply to Municipal Utilities workers, heads of department or the city manager.
Ward 5 representative Robert Smith and council member at-large Chris Taylor voted against the change, saying 45 miles was too far.
“I just want to know why you’re trying to fix something that’s not broken,” Smith said. “Twelve miles has worked for a number of years and to move this out to 45 miles (from the Butler County border), I can’t see any reasoning for it.
“If you think that’s going to attract more applicants for the police department, that’s not so, that’s not the way to go.”
The existing policy required all city employees to be residents of Butler County.
The vote came over the objections of current fire Chief Ralph Stucker and former fire chief Randy Hastings, who said it was critical for fire personnel to live in close proximity to help when more staff were needed to battle large fires.
Other members of the fire department, as well as other city departments, have said extending the residency requirement could be valuable in recruitment of new employees.
“I know this has been a very contentious subject,” Ward 2 representative Jerrica Fox said. “First, I want to say… that I respect the department heads, I respect our employees in all the work that they do…
“The employees have come before us and they stated they are all in favor of this, from every department, and the ones that are doing the job, feel they’re in favor of this.”
Taylor expressed concern other cities of similar size that have no residency requirement or similar residency requirements, also have more access to mutual aid than the city has for its fire department.
City manager Matt Winters said that was not the case with all of the cities that were discussed in formulating this policy.
“But we do have issues in recruitment. There are specific instances of people that live outside of Butler County,” Winters said. “There’s two dispatchers that have a lot of dispatch experience, that live outside of Butler County, who would come to work for the city of Poplar Bluff, if that residency requirement was extended.”
This was not something taken lightly by Winters or the council members, according to the discussion.
One of the other things taken into consideration, Winters said, was that many of the people who fall under the new requirement spend a lot of their money in Poplar Bluff.
The city has a very large trade area, he said.
“They may not live here, but they are a part of our community,” he said. “They work here, they shop here, their kids come to events here.”
The new requirements become effective immediately, according to city documents.