Richard Thompson needs a job. Actually, he’d like his old job back,
but at the moment he’s not feeling very picky. On September 25th, less
than a month after the birth of his first child, Ari Elise, Thompson
was suspended from his corporate communications position at Memphis
Light, Gas and Water. A week later, Thompson was terminated for failure
to comply with the ordinance requiring all city employees to live
within the Memphis city limits.
A letter to Thompson from MLGW explained that his apartment in the
city and his home in the county had been observed on numerous
occasions, and it was determined that Thompson functionally resided in
county. With his termination, Thompson became both an indirect casualty
of a bad economy and a prism through which to observe a complex and
controversial public policy.
Thompson case is instructive, because every party appears to be
acting in good faith, and because everybody is losing something in the
process. Thompson lost his job. MLGW lost a gifted, motivated
communicator, whose relentless blogging on his website,
Memphis-Mediaverse, has made the former Commercial Appeal
reporter something of a local online celebrity.
Thompson says fallout from the residency policy has created a new
class of worker. “I’m a part of what I call the duffel-bag class,”
Thompson says — city employees who have homes outside the city
limits they can’t sell. They are forced to either give up their jobs or
rent homes in the city limits and live there the majority of the time.
Thompson rented and lived in an apartment near downtown, while he and
his wife April attempted to sell their home in Southeast Shelby County.
He spent weekends with his wife in the county, until near the end of
her pregnancy.
“It wasn’t fair for her to have to do everything by herself,”
Thompson says. “I needed to be there to help.”
The Thompsons have been trying to sell their home since Richard
became an MLGW employee in October 2007. Thompson had been unemployed
for nearly a year before that, and although April worked as a
jazzersize instructor, the couple’s financial situation had
deteriorated drastically from since they purchased the
1,400-square-foot house nine years ago.
Shortly after starting his MLGW job, Thompson contacted Crye-Leike
agent LaQuita Rucker. The housing market was bottoming out, and his
house, a contemporary brick structure on Royce Cove between Germantown
Road and Shelby Drive, wasn’t in good condition. But the Thompsons
encouraged Rucker to mention their home to potential buyers to help
them get a feel for how much work the house needed. In July of 2008,
the house officially went on the market, a month after an MLGW
residency audit identified Thompson and 31 other MLGW employees who
appeared to reside outside the city limits.
According to MLGW spokesperson Chris Stanley, the utility’s
residency policy is adapted directly from the ordinance requiring city
employees to live within Memphis city limits. “As of their hire date,
they have six months to move their residency in order to be in
compliance with the ordinance and our policy,” he says. Each employee
hired now receives a copy of the policy in writing and signs a letter
agreeing to abide by the residency requirements upon accepting
employment.
“There are periodic checks done by our human resources department to
ensure employees are abiding by the ordinance and policy,” Stanley
says. “Employees found not to be in compliance are notified of the
results of the investigation and have the chance to prove
otherwise.
“Unfortunately, there is nothing MLGW can do to change the ordinance
or policy because of slow economic times,” Stanley adds. He says he’s
not sure how many employees have had trouble selling their houses.
Glen Thomas, MLGW’s supervisor of communications, says, “It is the
company’s responsibility to investigate any reports of policy
violation, whether it be residency or something else.”
Thompson admits that it could be unnerving to think that your
employer might be surveiling you, but, he adds, “I can’t be mad at
MLGW, because I see both sides of this.” He says it’s important for a
city that makes so much of its revenue from property taxes to consider
the value of a strong residency requirement.
In a blog post from October 2008, Thompson wrote that “history, home
rule, policy, and the undeniable will of the electorate, [makes it]
hard to form a contrarian position” against the residency requirement.
In that post, he linked to a newspaper article quoting Crye-Leike
co-founder Bob Leike, who worried that a significant change in home
sales “may not be seen until after the elections and the holidays.”
Leike said the real estate industry was certainly headed for better
times, but cautioned, “I just don’t know if it’s going to be at the
beginning of the year or mid-year.” Thompson responded to Leike’s
comments in his post, writing, “I have a Crye-Leike agent selling my
house. Sigh.”
Every telephone conversation Thompson has with his real estate agent
ends in a heavy sigh. “Someone else wants to see the house,” he says.
“And I can tell you right now what’s going to happen: The house will be
just what the person is looking for, until they walk into the bathroom
and see there’s no Jacuzzi tub. Then they won’t be interested anymore.
And all the getting ready will be for nothing.” Thompson has a
substantial list of prospective buyers who’ve made an appointment to
see the house but didn’t bite. “Sometimes, you’ll get a call on short
notice because somebody wants to see the house right away. It can be a
lot of work for nothing.”
Rucker says she is optimistic that home sales are finally starting
to improve, but adds, “Everybody knows that the market has been
terrible.” According to Rucker, it has been especially hard for
homeowners such as the Thompsons, because of all the homes in
bank-owned foreclosure. Rucker runs through a list of several
bank-owned properties near Thompson’s home. Most are twice the size of
his house, but have sold for $40,000 less than what the Royce Cove
property cost the Thompsons nine years ago. “That’s what these houses
are selling for. These are facts,” she says.
Thompson notes that some of the larger bank-owned properties in and
around his neighborhood have barely been lived in. He has no idea how
to compete, having already dropped the asking price for his house from
$125,000 to $110,000, the same price he and his wife paid for the
property in 2000.
“When I started working on Richard’s house, I thought it would sell
inside of 30 days. And I’ve usually got a good feeling for these sorts
of things,” Rucker says. “But it’s been well over a year now.” In the
meantime Thompson keeps compiling lists of who’s viewed his house and
collecting testimony from neighbors who’ll vouch that he’s only been a
part-time resident in his own home. And he keeps taking his appeal to
MLGW.
“The prevailing counter-argument in regards to the residency
requirement is the need for flexibility,” Thompson wrote on his blog in
2008, noting that police and fire departments had been calling out for
“flexibility and leniency in light of the challenge of recruiting new
employees.”
MLGW’s Thomas doesn’t think the law allows the public utility to be
flexible. “I think it’s important to remember that this is more than an
MLGW policy; it is a law that was voted into effect by the people of
Memphis,” he says. “MLGW follows the ordinance language verbatim with
respect to the passage that one must ‘live and maintain residence’
within the city limits. The ordinance language does not provide
flexibility.”
Thomas says the law doesn’t allow for much room to work with
employees, no matter what additional problems they might be dealing
with. “New hires must accept the residency policy as a condition of
employment,” he says. “If an employee is truly complying with the
residency policy, in that they live at and maintain a residence within
the city limits, then spending time elsewhere for whatever circumstance
would likely not be an issue.”
Thompson’s situation is looking up. Within weeks of his termination,
he found a buyer for his house. The closing is scheduled for November
30th, and he’s keeping his fingers crossed that nothing will go wrong.
“We feel really confident that everything will work out. It’s the
culmination of months of work and prayer,” he says.
In the meantime, he’s still renting his room downtown, trying to
convince MLGW that they got it wrong and hoping they’ll restore his
employment status. “Once the sale is completed, I plan to end my rental
agreement, because we’ll be able to consolidate our residences into one
that works for our whole family,” he says.
“I’ve lost 80 percent of my total household income,” Thompson says.
His wife, who closed her jazzercise studio during her pregnancy, also
has been unemployed while pursuing a teaching certificate at Christian
Brothers University.
Thompson contends that he has been a victim of a bad economy and of
worse timing; that if MLGW had conducted its investigation before the
end of his wife’s pregnancy, the result would have been different. The
human resources investigators would have seen him living in the city
five days a week and only returning to the county on weekends.
In spite of everything, Thompson seems grateful to MLGW officials
for having been as understanding as they’ve been.
There are others, such as Tom Jones of Smart City Consulting, who
think the residency policy is misguided and counter-productive for the
city. Jones, a former county employee, has addressed residency issues
on his Smart City Memphis blog. He says, “The big problem is that
Memphis needs talent wherever it can find it. Legislative bodies that
can’t even control the residency of their own members seem drawn to
these kinds of one size fits all policies because they think they are
politically popular.
“In reality, they are either unenforceable or they put government
into the onerous role of Big Brother spying on employees,” Jones
continues. “There should be middle ground.”
Jones notes that nearby cities don’t have residency requirements.
According to Jones, one HR director said, “Our people deserve the best,
wherever we can find them.”
