MURRAY -- Christmas came early for D'Arcy Dixon Pignanelli as the City Council voted 3-2 to amend Murray's controversial residency requirement Tuesday night, preserving her job as Mayor Dan Snarr's chief of staff.
Pignanelli had been living on the bubble for the past year, haunted by an ordinance adopted in late 1997 that required the mayor's administrative assistant to live within city boundaries.Emotionally drained after an hour of debate and uncertainty, a relieved Pignanelli leaned against a wall outside the council chamber and said she's ready to "pick up and move on" with city business.
"And I'm going to have a really nice Christmas," she added.
If the council vote had come out differently, a one-year deadline for moving to Murray would have expired Jan. 4 and Snarr ostensibly would have been required to terminate Pignanelli, who lives in Salt Lake City.
That would have pitted Snarr, who was determined to keep his top aide and had no intention of firing her, in a head-on legal confrontation with his own council over the constitutionality of the residency ordinance.
That showdown was averted when Councilman Lynn Turner, who was chairing the meeting, cast the deciding vote that broke a 2-2 tie on whether the ordinance should be amended.
The amendment deleted the positions of both Pignanelli and Shannon Jacobs, the executive director to the City Council, from the residency ordinance.
Only three city department heads are now required to live in Murray: the public services director, police chief and fire chief.
In a related action, the council voted 5-0 to amend the city's "vacancy in office" ordinance to stipulate that one of those three city officials would act as mayor in the event of the mayor's temporary absence or incapacity.
The law also provides that the acting mayor must be a Murray resident, but the issue is moot since the residency requirement automatically applies to all three.
But the residency issue was a close vote, with Council Chairman Leon Robertson and Councilman Wendell Coombs opposing the amendment.
Robertson said he has no problem with Pignanelli but indicated "people who have a major influence on policy decisions ought to comply" with the residency law.
Councilman John Rush, who made a series of impassioned motions to amend the ordinance, said that "attaching a residency requirement as a term of employment is foolhardy" if not legally questionable and impairs Murray's ability to attract top people.
Noting other cities have dropped similar requirements, Councilman Richard Stauffer agreed changing Murray's law would increase the pool of available employee talent.
"If all cities put in residency requirements," he said, "we would start putting up barriers."
Councilman Wendell Coombs, a retired Murray fire chief, said heads of departments responsible for emergency services should live in the community so they can respond quickly to crises.
Following confusion over a pair of council votes -- one of which appeared to amend the ordinance and another that left it intact -- Snarr appealed to council members not to handcuff his administration and let him select who he wants to be chief of staff.
Praising the work of Pignanelli, Snarr assured the council she "is not a department head and has no desire to be mayor pro tem."
He also said that after conferring with legal counsel, he "has some concerns about the constitutionality" of the residency law and would take whatever legal steps are necessary to keep Pignanelli.
Former councilman Gary Ferrero, now Murray's Justice Court judge, said he regrets he voted in favor of the residency law last December and agreed the law is on thin ice constitutionally.
A third and deciding vote on the issue blocked a motion by Coombs to send the matter back to a committee for study and resolved the issue at least for the time being.
"I have to believe the (opposing) votes were not personal," said Pignanelli. "That they (Robertson and Coombs) have specific issues that involve the city, and that it wasn't me."