It's the standard socialist solution to a social problem – don't fix things, build walls.

OJ:

Yes.

Never forget that this was a DemocRAT plan all along to build political machines based of the welfare class. Evil politicians want the city schools and neighborhods to be as bad as possible.

Every family of middle-class voters chased across the city line means that many fewer Republican voters to worry about. They have gotten their way.

I know families who have been chased three or four times in a couple of generations. What are we do do now, take their tax money and finance the transfer of social pathology to the places to which they have fled?

Think of how Moslems will be taking Europe over as the Europeans let themselves die out. The same sort of dynamic can take place here, as these little Leftist ghettoes gradually and voluntarily die off. Or, we will just have ring suburbs without an "urb" in the middle. No great loss either way.

'Moving them out to the suburbs' has been tried again, and again and again. NJ cities like Irvington, East Orange, Hillside, Maplewood, South Orange etc have been destroyed by the imposition of the urban underclass on them. All that has happened is that the same pathologies have spread much like lymphatic cancer.

The same stunt wrecked many NYC neighborhoods during the Lindsay Administration, such as Coney Island and Far Rockaway, and had it not been for the Asian and West Indian influxes, Flushing and Canarsie would have gone the same way.

The only way to change the behavior of the urban underclass is to create incentives to change that behavior along with disincentives to maintaining that behavior. Everything else is just moving the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Urbanism, like liberalism, is a disease. The sooner both are wiped out, the healthier our society will become.

East Orange was fine and well-integrated until the city removed the residency requirement for public employees.

East Orange was a hellhole in the 70s. After the 1967 riots, its days were numbered.

I know that East Orange was integrated since forever, having been a center of support for abolition before the Civil War. But once the decision was made to import the problem of the urban underclass from Newark as was done later in Irvington, it was over.

There is no reason to move people around. Just go back to the rational imposition of standards. End the process of encouraging the unfit to keep breeding at public expense, end the presence of the disruptive in the schools, and the criminals in the public housing and most of the issues would be over.

The policy you recommend has devastated much of the inner suburban ring of America from places like Compton to Cicero to Irvington to Prince Georges County, MD.

Yes, the law was changed in the late-60s. Destroyed a perfectly good town.

OJ
Are you suggesting that African-Americans can not have a decent town, without having a significant per cent of Whites living and/or working there? If not then why are residency requirements necessary for govt. employees?

No, they can't have a decent town without a middle class. Residency requirements exist because it's the townspeoples' money.

Residency requirements exist because it's a way for the city government to nail down people so they can be fleeced. It's no different that GM requiring it's employees to buy only Chevies, or Motorola forbidding it's employees from buying a Nokia cellphone.

h-man;

So that they're fouling their own nest when they screw up. Just like public schools would be better if the teachers, administrators and school board members were required to put their own children in them. If they can live somewhere else, it's just not their problem (nor their neighbors and social circle's problem) when munical services break down.

Don't take the job and you can live somewhere else.

Residency requirements also insure that you will get inferior people to do the work, as those who can flee to a different police force or school system will do so. This is certainly true in NJ where the municipal pension system is statewide and your time teaching in East Orange can be applied to your pension when you decide to retire from Millburn or Ridgewood.

AOG,

The teachers can't change the school system any more than the cop on the beat can change the justice system.

No they don't.

OJ,

Everyone, who can afford to flee the NYC or Newark or Jersey City school systems, flees them.

Not if you require the public employees to live in the city.

Your argument is completely circular. If a residency requirement is imposed, the only people who will take the job are those who want to live in that particular city or who can't get jobs elsewhere. How many people do you know who want to live in Newark and send their kids to Newark public schools? So, the pool of potential applicants becomes exclusively made up of people other districts have deemed undesirable, lowering the overall quality of the teaching pool. This situation feeds on itself, the schools get worse, fewer quality people wish to stay there, etc.

Are you mad! That would mean the end of the "urban place" as we imagine and cherish it.

Bart:

Nope. Folks will take the jobs cause they pay.

Can't find people to meet your standards? No problem, just lower the standards.

Just like a self inflicted wound, but worse.

OJ,

Do a little research.

Newark pays less than any of the surrounding suburbs. You have to go out to Western Morris County or Southern Ocean before you find a district in NJ as poorly paying as Newark, East Orange, Orange or Irvington. A friend of mine just fled Irvington for Jackson Twp. NYC pays about 25% less than anything on Long Island or Westchester.

Those places don't need residency requirements. In fact, teachers can't afford to live in places like Chappaqua or Manhasset.

The median expected salary for a typical Teacher Elementary School in Newark, New Jersey is $50,919.

http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layoutscripts/swzl_compresult.asp?narrowcode=ED01&jobcode=ED03000010&metrocode=120&metro=Newark&state=New%20Jersey&geo=Newark,%20New%20Jersey&jobtitle=Teacher%20Elementary%20School&narrowdesc=Education

You're in the 80s in Livingston and pushing 100K in Great Neck or Scarsdale.

And?

Are you being deliberately obtuse? If you can make $80000 in Livingston why would you settle for $50000 in Newark? Livingston gets a larger pool of people to select from and hence gets better teachers.

And Livingston doesn't have to impose a residency requirement.

because you can't get hired in Livingston.

Precisely. The best go to Livingston the dregs go to Newark.

Yes, the point is to keep them in Newark.