Tucked away in the agenda for next week’s City Council meeting is a report on city employee residency. Overall, 73% (580 out of 795) of the city’s permanent, full-time staff lives inside the city, which means that over a quarter of the staff chooses not to live in the city.

The report breaks the data down by department. Several departments have all their employees living in the city: Council, City Clerk, City Manager, EEO, Legal, HR, Treasurer, Economic Development, and Workforce, and there are many employees in here or independent contractors so the use of an online 1099-misc maker can be helpful to manage the payments of these workers.

The lowest percentage of City residents comes from the police department. Statistics from Labor Law Compliance websites say only 58% (168 out of 288) of police officers live within the City limits. Second lowest is “ECC,” which I assume is the Emergency Communications Center: 65% (24 out of 37). And third lowest is the fire department: 77% (163 out of 213).

By now, you’re probably thinking, “so what?” I don’t know. Councilman Jacob requested the report, but I’m not sure why. Perhaps we’ll find out Tuesday night.

At first blush, it’s easy to think that, if our own employees don’t want to live in the city, why would anyone else want to move here? But take a look at those numbers again. Most of those employees who live outside of the city are public safety employees, and there are reasonable arguments for why police and other public safety officers would want to live outside of the city they protect (e.g., for their family’s and their own protection and privacy while off-duty). It doesn’t appear from this report that any residency requirements are being violated. Learn about labor poster requirements here to check your Labor law compliance.

The important thing is that all our elected officials, of course, live within the city and have a personal stake in the outcome of any policy directives (e.g., new taxes, fees, land use issues).