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Council considers stretching WBPD residency requirement
by Rick DeClue · News · August 25, 2016


At the direction of the West Branch city Council, city staff will draft a proposed resolution for its Sept. 5 meeting to allow full-time police officers to live within an eight-mile radius of the city.


Currently, the city requires full-time officers to live within city limits.

Police Chief Mike Horihan said relaxing the requirement would significantly improve the department’s ability to recruit trained and certified officers in the future.

Horihan told the council several times in the past few years that the requirement led to the loss of several certified candidates in the past. He said the ability to live in a nearby surrounding community or in the country would provide a lot of flexibility.

The chief assured the council that he expected to continue living in West Branch. As an example, he said that Ofc. Cathy Steen, currently part-time, opted not to move to West Branch, making her ineligible for a full-time position.

Horihan called Steen a valuable addition, and said she hopes to one day work full-time for the WBPD. He told the council she is considering relocating here. The flexibility of a relaxed residency requirement might immediately assure the availability of a well-qualified and well-known candidate in the department’s next recruiting effort, he said.

The council initially reacted to the chief’s request by raising concerns expressed in past discussions of this issue – starting with response times for officers “on call.”

Council member Colton Miller questioned the effectiveness of an officer receiving an emergency call in the middle of the night who must “uniform up” before driving to the scene of the problem from as far as 10 miles away.

After confirming that on-call officers currently take their police vehicles home, Miller said he would not like to see squad cars leave the city if officers live outside of town.

This would add to response times as those officers would have to retrieve a vehicle before making their way to the scene of a call, Horihan said. Miller then asked where police vehicles could be stored out of the weather to keep them prepared for immediate use.

Horihan offered several potential storage possibilities. He also presented the council with a map showing a 10-mile circle around West Branch.

Surrounding small communities inside the circle are basically limited to Springdale and Downey. However, the circle included an area on east and southeast portions of Iowa City.

After objections from council member Brian Pierce and Miller, Chief Horihan agreed to reduce the request to an eight-mile radius in order to limit the circle to, for example, residences along Scott Drive with easier access to West Branch than areas in more congested areas of Iowa City.

Pierce asked whether the department had back-ups for on-call officers, in case a situation required an immediate response. Horihan said there are some back-ups, and that the department may need to look closer at those procedures.

City Administrator Matt Muckler told the council the city has made progress in making the police department more competitive in terms of salaries. Addressing the residency requirement may be the next necessary step for future hiring.