Should the City of Boston end residency requirements?

[mdovell]

hartfords problems are well beyond just the city. it's too small and has some of the lowest amounts of taxable properties, there's school buildings that are condemned and need demoing and it's still under financial receivership etc. Hartford does have residency, in fact it was one of the strictest in the region. They wanted people to be there upon time of applying! Forget about giving six months or a year. Who would move to a place and then apply for a chance to get a job? Makes no sense.

Now supposedly it's just department heads.

The basic ideas for residency are these:

faster response times
somehow spending more money locally
more active in the community
attracts young single people without kids

The trouble is frankly you can't have it fixed on a neighborhood so the first one is out for larger cities, there's really no evidence of spending more money locally nor is there for the third.

Basic ideas against it
you vote for your own paycheck
it jacks up property values as owners know you have to live there
your job is always there - it's not like working for a place and having it go away.
it only attracts those that move from afar, usually without kids or a spouse

There are some people that act as if city funds always come from people in the city. That somehow money is stolen if people live outside it and are city employees. Between state and federal aid and non profit grants we know this isn't really the case. Some of these arguments might have made more sense in the 70's and 80's when yeah you could make an argument that someone could buy things locally and this technically supports general population. But we're much more connected now and not everything is bought from a corner store. I joked with a friend that OK fine if we want to do things without the internet and locally then I guess I have to get off work early to get to the hardware store before it closes at 6pm. I've never heard anyone say "I wish we had residency so these stores would stay open". Online shopping changed everything.

Education can create further complications. Imagine if someone is a city employee of Boston who has kids that are in the Metco system? so..... So let's say someone from Braintree got that job. The kid ends up going back to Braintree public schools and Boston public schools ends up paying for the transportation costs to get there!