New Hometown Advantage Weighed In City Hiring

A proposal to add points to a civil service exam may make it easier for New Haveners to get jobs — or it may undermine the whole purpose of the exams.

Those two views emerged as aldermen Monday night unanimously approved a proposal calling on the city to double the number of residency points awarded to New Haveners who apply for civil service jobs in city government.

The proposal would build on work begun in 2006, when the city agreed to give New Haven residents an extra five points on civil service exams. That applies to everyone from entry-level firefighters and cops to deputy department directors — all civil service positions, except those tested by promotional exams.

Aldermen propose raising the residency benefit to 10 points, provided that applicants can prove they’ve lived in the city for two years. The bill isn’t binding — it’s a resolution directing the Civil Service Commission to change city policy accordingly. Click here to read the resolution, which all 30 aldermen introduced and approved Monday.

The bill was one of two jobs initiatives aldermen approved Monday. The other called for creating a committee to establish a jobs ​“pipeline.” ( Click here to read about that.) The initiatives reflect a determination by members of a new Board of Aldermen to take leadership in addressing joblessness in town.

“This really is a good beginning for the board to provide constituents a chance at employment,” said Hill Alderwoman Jackie James.

“The way it is now is just not working,” James said, ​“when you look at how many residents are actually being hired.” She and Perez, along with former Alderman Darnell Goldson, have been discussing the issue for some time. Aldermen even got the city to agree to ask for state permission to require city workers to live in New Haven.

As of the latest count in 2010, only 37 percent of city government workers lived in New Haven. The city compiled this chart (pictured) illustrating the residency of city union members.

As New Haven faces a 11.7 percent unemployment rate, James said the board needs to give New Haveners ​“the opportunity to be gainfully employed.” The board should to do ​“whatever we need to do” to make that happen — ​“without minimizing the expectations or standards,” she said.

Hartford, Bridgeport, and Waterbury give their residents five to 10 point bonus on civil service exams, according to the resolution.

James said the idea for boosting residency points came from city firefighters.

Darrell Brooks, the political director of the New Haven Firebirds, the city’s fraternal association of black firefighters, said he supports the idea. He called the proposal an economic benefit to the city.

“The tax base becomes stronger when the people who live here have meaningful, sustainable jobs,” he said.

In a recent count, less than a third of city firefighters lived in New Haven.

The Firebirds are already working with the city at a new public safety academy at Hillhouse High School, where high-schoolers are preparing for careers in police and fire departments. Brooks said extra residency points would help graduates of that program land city jobs.

People who live in New Haven and have careers in city government are more likely to own homes and stay in town, which makes the city stronger, Brooks argued.

“I’m a perfect example,” said Brooks, a 17-year veteran of the city firefighting force who was born and raised in New Haven. ​“I became a firefighter and I became a homeowner.” Now he’s raising kids in the city.

In an interview Monday, Mayor John DeStefano welcomed the aldermen’s proposal. ​“We ought to have a discussion about it,” he said.

The city plans to examine the issue further and submit a proposal to the Civil Service Commission, according to city Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts.

Smuts said the city has one concern in mind as it studies the topic: How to ​“make sure we preserve the point of civil service — which is to test for the most qualified applicants.”

The city already has three incentives for applicants on civil service exams, Smuts said: New Haven residents get five points, veterans get five, and disabled veterans get another five, on a 100-point exam. At some point, he argued, increasing those available points may undermine the system.

For example, he said, if a candidate gets 10 residency points and five veteran points, ​“does that distort the original purpose of civil service?”

The current system has a safeguard against letting the extra points bear too much weight: To pass a civil service test, applicants have to score a 70 of their own merit. Only then are the extra points added. So just being a New Havener can’t enable someone who failed the test to land a job.

As the city examines the new proposal, he said, it plans to explore ​“whether this is something that makes sense for all jobs that are open, or just some.”

He raised two arguments to why entry-level civil service jobs might be treated differently from, say, the deputy director of the parks department or the city engineer.

For entry-level jobs, such as parks caretakers, cops or firefighters, candidates who score a 70 are considered qualified to get the job, Smuts said. The tests don’t judge job knowledge. Rookies learn the skills in the academy and on the job.

By contrast, a city engineer is expected to have a significant amount of job knowledge before landing the post.

Another big difference between those two types of jobs, Smuts said, is the sheer number of applicants.

When the city tests for an engineer or deputy director of a department, it gets only get a handful of applicants. However, hundreds of applicants pour in for entry-level parks, police and fire jobs.

“When you have many, many, many multiples of applicants more than you’re going to hire, the way the test ends up working out is that the point differences between different applicants tends to matter less,” Smuts explained.

If you lay out the test results along a curve, adding residency points may significantly change where a candidate falls on that curve if there are only a few applicants. With many applicants, however, adding those points ​“has a less distorting impact on the distribution curve.”

Smuts said the city hasn’t yet taken a stance on how those two types of jobs should be treated.

“I wouldn’t say right now whether more points might be applicable in one circumstance or another,” he said. But the last time the topic was considered, about five years ago, ​“there was some feeling that it might make sense to give more points for what would be considered entry-level jobs.”

James Segaloff, who served on the Civil Service Commission for 10 years before stepping down last year, echoed that concern.

“I’d be concerned” about the proposal — not opposed, he said. ​“I don’t know where you draw the line, but I’d be concerned of the unintended consequences of putting too much emphasis on” residency, and losing qualified applicants who live out of town.

“I think we need to take that into consideration,” Alderwoman James later responded. ​“We’re looking to have a broader conversation about this process. This is a recommendation. It’s not final.”

Smuts said any proposal the city makes would be aired in a series of public hearings.

“I don’t want to preclude any possible direction that we’ll take” after talking to aldermen and the public about the topic, Smuts said. He said the board is ​“supporting the direction that we were thinking of exploring” in increasing the hometown advantage for at least some jobs.

“We’re very interested in exploring this, particularly now that we have the Board of Aldermen calling on us.”