[B]URLINGTON — Two more municipal department heads were granted hardship exemptions to the city’s residency requirement Monday at the City Council meeting.
Both were technically in compliance with the requirement, which specifies only that certain department heads be registered to vote in Burlington. Chief Administrative Officer Bob Rusten and Burlington Electric Department Director Neale Lunderville both met that requirement by renting apartments in the Queen City.
Lunderville owns a home in South Burlington, and Rusten lives in Hinesburg.
The City Council recently granted an exemption to Noelle MacKay, the newly appointed director of the Community Economic Development Office, on the grounds that selling her Shelburne home and moving to Burlington would create an economic hardship. Lunderville and Rusten then made their appeals to councilors on largely the same grounds.
Lunderville told the council his family had made significant investments in their South Burlington home that could not be recouped through a sale. Rusten said he planned to retire in the next two years and wanted to remain in Hinesburg after leaving city government.
Their requests come at a time when the city’s elected officials are mulling a charter change that would make explicit that owning a home in Chittenden County outside Burlington can be sufficient.
After Monday’s meeting, six of the 12 city department heads bound by the residency requirement have hardship exemptions to live outside the city.
The vote to approve Lunderville’s exemption was 9 to 4, while Rusten’s was approved 11 to 1, with Dave Hartnett, I-North District, not present at the vote. Several councilors said they felt Rusten’s case for a residency exemption met the current definition of a hardship, while Lunderville’s did not.
City Council President Jane Knodell, P-Central District, noted MacKay’s recent exemption and added that the policy is “evolving.”
Faced with a decision between a “hardline” interpretation of the residency requirement and potentially losing Lunderville as BED director, she said, she’d prefer to keep him.
Max Tracy, P-Ward 2, said his votes against hardship exemptions for both men did not reflect on their performance, but rather his belief that department heads should live in Burlington.
That both Rusten and Lunderville were able to meet the requirement without actually moving to Burlington full time shows the need to improve the requirement, Tracy said.
Selene Colburn, P-East District, said she felt “trapped in an endless fairness loop,” where an exemption granted to one department head on certain grounds then needs to be granted to others if requested.
The Charter Change Committee will take up proposed changes that would codify the grounds for recent exemptions, such as Lunderville’s and MacKay’s, at its next meeting in late June.
