Palmer to propose residency rules updates for city manager, department heads

What you need to know:

• The Palmer City Council will consider proposals to ease residency requirements for the city manager and department directors. Voter approval is required to change the manager’s residency rule, while the council can amend the director rule through a vote. Specific details of the proposals are still being developed.
• The current rules are deterring internal candidates from applying for open positions, officials said. New City Manager Kolby Zerkel is also facing challenges relocating her family to Palmer. The proposed update and ballot measure will be considered by the council next month.
• Tuesday’s meeting concluded with a heated exchange between Council Member Ken Erbey and borough resident Jackie Goforth during Erbey’s lengthy closing comments. Goforth attempted to file a harassment charge against Erbey over a remark he made about her during his statement.

Palmer –  The Palmer City Council will consider a ballot measure proposal that would eliminate a strict residency rule for the city manager, officials said this week. The council will also vote on an ordinance changing city residency rules for department directors.

The proposals will be considered next month, Palmer City Council members and Mayor Steve Carrington said at a regular council meeting Tuesday.

Palmer’s charter requires the manager to live within the city, an area of about five square miles. The city’s code permits directors to live within a five-mile radius of Palmer’s limits.

The proposed updates would expand the distance directors can live from the city borders and add an allowance for the manager to live a certain distance outside city limits, officials said.

While the council can change the rules for directors through a vote, changes to the city charter require voter approval.

If approved by the council, a measure asking voters whether to change residency requirements for the manager would appear on city ballots in October.

The city’s current rules are designed to ensure officials can respond to emergencies quickly and maintain a full-time view of the city’s needs, Palmer officials said. But they also make it difficult to fill open positions, in part because internal candidates may not want to relocate their families, and because Palmer’s housing market is very tight, they said.

The residency rule for directors is actively creating challenges in hiring a new police chief and fire chief, said City Manager Kolby Zerkel. Both positions were recently vacated due to retirements.

“This provision is impacting internal candidates from either applying or they have applied but will not be able to accept the position,” Zerkel said during the meeting on Tuesday. “We have technology that allows us to do this. … This is why we move on with the times. So I would absolutely support removing that residency requirement for the directors so that we don’t lose our internal candidates.”

The manager’s residency rule is also creating a roadblock for Zerkel, whom the city council hired in April. She has until late October to relocate to Palmer, according to her contract.

While she continues to house hunt, limited open options in Palmer that fit the needs of her growing family have made the task difficult, she said in an interview after the meeting Tuesday.

“I drive by some place, and it’s either sold right away, or we lose out,” she said.

She said she hopes the city works with voters to keep some form of residency rule for the manager but expands the allowed zone beyond city limits.

Specific language for both proposals is still under development, including details on how far outside city limits directors or the manager may be permitted to live and what border or measurement would be used to set those parameters.

Council members said they would be open to expanding the allowable distance for the manager to the five-mile radius currently used for directors.

But how and where to set new limits for directors could be more complicated. Concepts discussed at Tuesday’s meeting included using the boundaries of the city’s water and sewer district, which extends well beyond Palmer’s city limits; expanding the residency radius to eight or 10 miles, so long as it does not cross into Wasilla; or using the boundaries of Palmer’s 99645 ZIP code, which stretches towards Wasilla and out through the Butte.

Council members asked City Attorney Sarah Heath to draft a director residency rule proposal with several different border options.

Carrington said he plans to introduce a city manager ballot measure proposal in the coming weeks.

Palmer is the only city in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough with residency rules for directors and the only one to operate under a city manager form of government.

Meeting ends with fireworks.

While most of Tuesday’s meeting focused on regular city business, such as the residency discussion, it ended with fireworks during lengthy and contentious closing comments by Council Member Ken Erbey.

Jackie Goforth, a borough resident who most recently spearheaded a recall campaign against Palmer Mayor Steve Carrington, stood up, interrupted the proceedings and asked several police officers present to file a harassment charge after Erbey referred to her as “Mrs. Goforth, of all people.”

“Excuse me, I’d like to file harassment. Can I file harassment, please?” she said. “You put my name personally in, sir, and I am a resident.”

Acting Police Chief Luke Szipszky, who was also present, told Goforth she could not file charges.

“There’s nothing to file right now. He has not committed a crime,” he said.

Goforth responded that she plans to look at her legal options. She volunteered to leave the meeting when Carrington said she was “out of order.”

Erbey’s more than 20-minute closing statement detailed a February memo submitted to the city by Public Works Director Jude Bilafer. The memo addressed a controversy regarding the city’s water quality that month and a private discussion between Bilafer, Council member Victoria Hudson and Goforth after a city meeting during which he testified on the topic.

Hudson said Tuesday that she asked Goforth to join her in speaking with Bilafer because she avoids holding one-on-one meetings with men and because Goforth was standing nearby when she was looking for a third party.

Hudson asked Bilafer during that meeting to decide in which “camp” his loyalties sit in the city, according to the memo. Erbey said he believes it’s inappropriate that Hudson thinks there are “camps” within city operations. He also said Goforth was not a credible witness to include because she noted in a public comment about the meeting that “my mind was pretty much not even listening” to what was said.

Goforth said Erbey's complaints were hearsay based on the memo. Bilafer, who presented a public works update to the council early in the meeting Tuesday, left during a break and was not present during Erbey’s remarks.

Erbey’s remarks were ultimately truncated Tuesday following a “point of order” raised by Hudson, who noted that, in addition to speaking negatively about another council member and a private resident in violation of a city ethics policy, Erbey had also exceeded a 10-minute time limit set for council members by Carrington.

-- Contact Amy Bushatz at contact@matsusentinel.com