The NRP is paid for by everyone's taxes, not just yours or Cooper neighborhood's, so NRP salaries and expenditures are included at everyone's expense - even city employees. Not all city employees are civil servants or members of AFSCME and we're not protected from the current financial realities as you've assumed. Many of us have already or soon will be losing our jobs just like everybody else. I disagree that just because a person lives in the city, it makes them a more productive, valuable or knowledgeable employee, and that if they live in the suburbs, they're a lazy slacker...but the issue could be taken further: what about state employees? Where in the state should they be required to live in order to perform their jobs to the best of their ability? And should farmer/senators from rural Minnesota w/manure on their boots be able to voice an opinion on issues that even remotely pertain to Minneapolis? Maybe NRP policy board members should be required to live in each and every neighborhood that gets a dime of NRP money - although then they'd be transient and that last I checked is illegal. And speaking of legality, this is pretty much what the Hollman lawsuit was about - rather forcefully suggesting where people of a certain ilk, color, or financial situation should live according to some visionary milktoast's idea of what's right(wing).
Due to the limited availability of affordable housing and housing options at the time (it escapes me as to exactly when) the City's residency requirement was repealed. Add to that police officers not necessarily wanting to have to go home to a neighborhood where they may have arrested (or urinated) on a neighbor. A valid concern in my opinion, as one could only imagine the retaliation in Jordan last summer should a decent, hard-working police officer have parked his squad in front of his own darn house after a hard day at work. And just imagine if that particular officer had been (gulp) white...
Add to that the recent surprise to the council that the the city doesn't pay some of its own employees a living wage (its the thought that counts) and it makes even more sense to allow them freedom of residential choice - something that city employees have been working at providing for EVERYONE in this city for years now.
Forcing someone to live in a community not of their choosing or liking isn't going to make them perform their job better in neither the public or the private sector.
Respectfully,
Jill Harmon
Cleveland
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