March 7th, 2018
HORNELL, NY – The city of Hornell’s Law and Ordinance Committee met Wednesday afternoon and the first order of business was dealing with a law that has been problematic for Mayor John Buckley since he took office.
The current law reads that any/all city employees must maintain residency within the city to be employed by the city. This has created a headache for Buckley and the council because over the years exceptions have slipped through the cracks and decisions need to be made on how to deal with it, all the while insuring fairness to the roughly 99 city employees that have abided by the law.
Hornell City Attorney Joe Pelych attended the meeting prepared with newly written resolution amending the current residency requirements. According to Pelych’s proposal, the amendments would be as follows:
1- Change the venue for wavier hearings from the Board of Public Safety to the Law and Ordinance Committee.
2- The law now will not apply to part time/seasonal employees.
3- It will take out the Promotion Penalty.
4- The final decision on granting a wavier must be made by the full Common Council instead of the Board of Public Safety.
New full time hires will still have to abide by the residency requirement unless granted a waiver. According to Buckley, only six employees are being affected by this law, with two being automatically eliminated through the discarding of the Promotional Penalty and one through retirement. The remaining three will have to seek a waiver to still be employed by the city and live out of the area.
After the approval of Pelych’s amended resolution by the Law and Ordinance Committee, the next step will be to bring it in front of the full Common Council meeting next month.
