Dozens of city civil service workers will be allowed to live outside South Milwaukee following a series of votes at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
The key vote: A 4-3 decision in favor of amending the Civil Service Personnel Manual to mirror the residency requirement for most non-represented employees and members of the firefighter union.
In short, the council voted to allow non-represented and civil service employees — we currently have 86 such employees on our payroll, in addition to 10 vacancies — to live within these boundaries: Highway 20 from Racine west to Highway S; north on S to Highway K; west on K to Highway 164, north on 164 to the Waukesha-Racine County border, east to Highway V (Town Line Road) extended, north on Highway V extended to Silver Spring Road (Highway VV), and east on Silver Spring Road to Whitefish Bay.
I voted yes, and I explained my reasoning in a previous post.
Simply, I think this is the right thing to do. We owe it to city taxpayers to not let geography (within reason) limit our search for the highest quality candidates for jobs in our city.
In the end, I think most city employees will end up living here because they want to — not because they’re forced to. We see it already. Of those 86 non-represented and civil service employees impacted by this policy, 57 already call South Milwaukee home.
And of the 10 new people we’re hiring, I’m hoping all 10 choose to live here and invest in our community … emphasis on “choose.” There’s lot of wonderful reasons to live in South Milwaukee and love this city. I’m betting they’ll want to live here.
What do you think of the decision? Post your comments below, and vote in the poll!
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