RESIDENCY

In this City from 1987 until yesterday, employees of the City were required to live within the City limits. I lived in the City at the time and I still do, by choice. I am also retired and have no school age children. City administrators in the 80’s touted the advantages of a vote for a residency requirement to be pretty much that people who lived in the City they worked in were more responsible, more energetic, more productive than if they hit the freeway to their house in the suburbs at five every evening. Funny, I always thought it had to do with a day’s work for a day’s pay – or a work ethic that mandated that I perform certain tasks daily, for a certain salary, no matter where I happened to live. Apparently that was too old fashioned a concept. “Wouldn’t you rather have your Police Officer live in your neighborhood?” one ad asked.

So we got residency from the voters and we got:

- workers’ families forced to send their children to a school system that was crumbling as school administrators stole money and used Dayton simply as a quick step to better things for themselves.

- relaxed hiring requirements for some public safety officers because there were not enough qualified applicants under the old system within the City limits.

- dedicated and productive employees – and some not so dedicated – being observed and followed by private detectives hired by the City if there were suspicions that they lived even five hundred feet over the line.

Now the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that residency was never a valid concept legally. City employees can live wherever they want. And I suspect that, over the next five years or so when the housing market picks up, dribs and drabs of workers are going to steadily move outside the City to more prosperous suburbs with really good school systems. Also, apparently, the City now has some legal obligation to those people who were previously fired for ‘violating’ the residency rule. I gleefully hope it’s a heavy sentence and that those rehired workers come to the job every day and look their supervisors in the eye and say “Gotcha!”

Now, City of Dayton, maybe you can do some real and energetic work in your school system, on crime in neighborhoods, on your tax base, without having to imprison workers in an attempt to shore up the status quo. Time to don your thinking caps for some REAL progress! Ta!