Well, Well, Well - Residency
Proving once again that we have some of the smartest readers in the universe (we also have some of the dumbest, but we don't talk about them much):
- WASHINGTON - Police and firefighters across the nation are leading legal and legislative campaigns against rules that require them and other municipal employees to live in the cities where they work.
Residency requirements for public safety workers have been around for decades, and have long been viewed as an effective way to help make communities safe and economically stable. However, there is growing concern that residency laws make it too difficult for urban public safety agencies - particularly police departments - to recruit and retain officers.
In Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Louisiana and elsewhere, residency laws are under assault by critics who say patrol cops and their families sometimes face a difficult choice: Live in high-income neighborhoods they can't afford or in low-income areas that can be home to poor schools.
Go read the entire article over at USAToday. This could be what lawyers (damn, we hate lawyers) call a "precedent" type of decision. All we have to do is see one of these lawsuits succeed in the courts - especially at the Federal level, and we take the current City Administration completely out of the picture. CPD, CFD, and every other employee in the City finally gets what other Americans take for granted - the freedom to live where you want to live.
Residency has outlived it's usefulness - as quoted in the article, these aren't the days of horses and buggies. If you can afford the cost of gas and you can tolerate the commute, there is no reason you can't live within 30 miles of the city and send your kids to better schools that what the City provides. Who knows? Maybe this would provide the impetus to finally have meaningful reform at a number of levels.
Residency has outlived it's usefulness - as quoted in the article, these aren't the days of horses and buggies. If you can afford the cost of gas and you can tolerate the commute, there is no reason you can't live within 30 miles of the city and send your kids to better schools that what the City provides. Who knows? Maybe this would provide the impetus to finally have meaningful reform at a number of levels.
posted by SCC at 12:03 AM
50 Comments:
Wayne Il, Here I come
I’ve long considered the residency requirement to be un-Constitutional based on the Supreme Court case that said residency requirements for welfare void.
The Court held that Americans have the right to move, live and collect welfare anywhere they want. That brought the massive migration invasion of poor Blacks out of Southern sates where they paid nominal assistance to places like IL, MI and WI that paid people very well for not working.
I’d like to think working cops and firefighters are just as good as the folks that don’t have to work.
Bye, bye Daley.....Hello suburbs!
I would put money on it that if the City dropped the residency rule right now, less than 5% of the coppers would leave. Face it, we are a lazy bunch (and also cheap) and driving in from 30 miles out in traffic would get old quick, plus with gas at $2.50 a gallon?? Come on......let's work on a 5 day work week instead!!
So let's just make sure the dumb ass union does not give something away for residence.
It is something that is going to happen because the law will be overturned. My huge fear is that the union will give up a HUGE concession to the city to lift residence and tell them memebers they won something for us will in time the city will be forced to do it not because of the union but because of law
they wanr us living in the city because of taxes.
On the phone bill the electric bill sales tax city stickers etc etc
Plus then they dont have to drive to Naperville to medical check you
Maybe they could start by letting us live in the contiguos 'burbs
Never gonna happen... Dick won't let it. And besides he has to keep us around so when Jr. comes back fro the "war" and takes over.
Isn't interesting that we don't hear about "slugger" anymore. Of course till he comes back a grizzled "war veteran". Than Daddy can set himup as an alderman and next Mayor,
Please pass the residency rule and let me go!
PLEEEEASE DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS RULE. THIS IS THE ONLY OBSTACLE THAT IS STOPPING ME FROM BECOMING A CHICAGO COP. IF YOU GUYS START SOMETHING LIKE WHAT OTHER COPPERS FROM DIFFERENT CITIES ARE DOING, YOU GUYS WILL GET LOTS OF SUPPORT.
GOOD LUCK
Please Jesus Please!
I think you all should have the option to decide where you want to live and raise your families.
This is a topic that has come up on the Philly forum numerous times and it's a subject those in the PPD are very passionate about.
Question:
Although many in the PPD want the choice to live where they want and have the residency restriction lifted, many say they'd stay where they're at and wouldn't move.
Would you move ASAP if the rule were lifted, or would you stay in the City?
I'll finally have my dream home in Harvey! Yes!
Anonymous said...
I would put money on it that if the City dropped the residency rule right now, less than 5% of the coppers would leave. Face it, we are a lazy bunch (and also cheap) and driving in from 30 miles out in traffic would get old quick, plus with gas at $2.50 a gallon?? Come on......let's work on a 5 day work week instead!!
Umm...speak for yourself buddy...I know that if residency was dropped my husband and I would have our house on the market before the end of the next day. It's not a tough choice between paying for 13 years of private school or sending them to better FREE public schools in the burbs!
Can't wait,I'm moving to the suburbs...how is Robbins ?
Hey, where are you guys from Mount Greenwood gonna go?... Blue Island?.. Cal City?.. Harvey?.. Robbins???
Everything around you is poop! You're surrounded like Custer at Little Bighorn! heh heh heh
Be careful what you wish for.....
HEY GUYS JUST OUT OF CURIOSITY IF YOU COULD LIVE OUT OF THE CITY WARE WOULD YOU WANT TO LIVE TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION TRANSPORTATION,SCHOOLS,CRIME STATS AND SO FOURTH LET US KNOW PERHAPS THERE WILL ONE DAY BE A ¨COPLAND IN THE SUBURBS¨
I would love to be able to move out to Orland and hope on the expressway and get to work. It's hell being chained down to the city. For all of us cops on the South Side, we're pretty much stuck either living in Mt. Greenwood or Garfield Ridge. I'm not about to move up north, so that doesn't leave us with much options. Having the choice to move out to a contiguous burb would make life a hell of a lot easier.
Oh I'd love to see the money hungry fuckin politicians cry if this came to pass! Shit, I already live in 022, I'd just go a mile west to Oak Lawn or somewhere else close... Fuck The Machine.
like the one post said less than 5% would leave, i would put it at maybe 10%, there are more important things to get for us like 10 hour day? or something that makes more sense, or how bout more compression like down to 25 yrs? or how bout better medical?.....and besides if they gave up residency then what would you all have to complain about? probably the drive to work then
Hey 11:53
I would leave in a heart beat, transfer to Area Two-I hear they have a great gun team- and live in nieghboring Indiana - Plate my cars at my parents address in Illinos,(Faq Indiana out of the registration fee) and buy a two flat in Gary(Hillbilly slumlord). But I must be one of 5% you talked about.
One can only dream....
Sorry about the Hillbilly refence I know they prefer to be called Sons of the Soil
Great idea; but you'll never get that corrupt union and Donapuke to fight Daley. We need to storm that FOP hall and throw those f*ckers on the street; install our own puppet regime until we can have an election.
Residency in Chicago makes no sense. The fundamental argument is that the officers will care more about the city because they live in it; however, the main problem is that officers usually DO NOT POLICE IN THIER OWN NEIGHBORHOOD. The majority of CPD officers DONT live on the beat that they patrol, so what does it matter if they live a few districts or a few towns over? huh? eh? oh, thats right. Basicey there is this stupid state law....we cant even bargain this until Illinois law is changed. Chicago is home to the machine. I wonder if Pres Bush and Daley were discussing residency at the Firehouse restaraunt a few weeks back....
chicago is a nice place to visit but getting unaffordable for the working man.
let us get rid of residency and i am gone like a M.F.
I have mixed feelings on residency. I think we should be able to live where we want but at the same time, I'll admit, as a homeowner I am concerned about my house value. That being said if residency was lifted I'm not sure where I would live. As a previous poster said driving 30 miles in heavy traffic would get old. I like my current neighborhood and my neighbors (Police, Fire, City Workers). As Long as I am employed by CPD I prob would stay either in or close to the city limits. I do not hate this city and I have relatives who live in the burbs who pay a lot more in Property taxes, even more than me including my Catholic Tuition payment. Finally, as for those who spout off that It was a condition of our employment when we signed up, yes, you are correct. However things change. When I signed up a condition of my employment was also free health care, free health care for me when I retire, no merit promotions and no B.S. like the DOC and CAPS. If the City can change things why not us?
I've read up on this and found that
Residency was originally designed and inititated only so that the police and fire could respond to a major emergency with minimal delay, back in the days when the politicians feared a Communist invasion or an urban riot.
Recently, in other cities, including Kankakee, The courts have said that residency was legal if the employees can reach work within an hour's drive. In Chicago, on the expressways, an hour's drive is pretty damn far. Thay would be a reasonable compromise.
It isn't about tax money, votes or housing prices. We are a very very small group within the city population.The law is old, archaic, left over from the cold war era. Seriously. People are staring to see that it is stupid.
And yes, it is unconstitutional.
Time to step up with the other other Lodges F.O.P.
We are one of the biggest in the nation, lets join the fight.
Shit, what can we lose?
I would put money on it that if the City dropped the residency rule right now, less than 5% of the coppers would leave. Face it, we are a lazy bunch (and also cheap) and driving in from 30 miles out in traffic would get old quick, plus with gas at $2.50 a gallon?? Come on......let's work on a 5 day work week instead!!
Care to take a wager on that?!
"Never gonna happen... Dick won't let it."
................
It would be hard to stop it from happening if yo are in the federal pen.
Anonymous said...
they wanr us living in the city because of taxes.
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This concept is no longer valid.
Property tax is based on the assessed value of your property. Most assessments of houses come very short of they're current asking price.
I am in the market to buy so I have been looking at this for some time. My average target price is $360,000 for a 3/2 ranch. The assesd value of the houses I've looked at never go above $230,000. 230 being very high in an area like Oriole Pk.
The way taxes work is that you are charged a percentage of the assesment, typically 1.6%. So to do the math, take your assessed value x .016 = yrly taxes owed.
Not surprisingly, typically, the NW side has higher prices and thus higher assessed values over the SW side.
Enter the Yuppies Condo Owner to the picture. If you work city wide or in A/3 you know all too well what I'm talking about. In the last 5+ years during this historic housing boom condos have sprung up like weeds in a West Side vacant lot. Each condo at minimum has three stories, three units.
Now take a look at the skylines of the north and south loop with the high rise condos being built. How many units get stuffed into there? Alot.
My non-plice friend bought a 2/2 on Dearborn on the 25th of 25 floors. Each floor has A, B, C, D units. That is is 100 units of Yuppie wealth in one high rise building. I saw a forsale sign for a high rise today. 2/2 for $400,000!
Does anyone know how taxes are assessed for new construction? The correct answer is ... SALES PRICE.
That's right. All the new condos in 020, 019, 018, 012, 014, 013, 001, etc: take their SALES PRICE x .016 = A whole lot more than City workers contribute.
Now, again, think of ALL those condos that were built in the last 5+ years! The yuppies have become the New Tax Base.
Abolish residency? Fat chance. Daley still wants to control the vote. What vote's say you? The black vote, the Puerto Rican vote, and the Irish vote. Funny thing about the Irish. They will line up piss drunk at the Heritage Center (Muslims have more heritage) and kiss a third assistant precient captains ass and vote for a pedophile as long as he's Irish. Don't worry daley can always count on the hillbillys to re-elect him.
Damm I will be the first one to move out of the city. Houses are too expensive here can't afford it. Maybe a pay raise again or the housing market really CRASH ! then I would love to stay inthe city.
If the residency rule was voided today, do you really think that you could pay triple the real estate tax.
Don't say it...well my kid can go to a public school out here. Yea right. They share the same problems there in their high schools, as we do here.
The burbs are not such a hot idea everything considered.
Traffic blows...
No overnight parking in front of your home...
Local rules are monitored...
No block clubs...
No CAPS meetings...
No Meeks...
Wait a minute, this may work after all.
To Crimefile 10/04/2006 11:38:04 PM
While I completely agree that the residency requirement for Chicago police officers should be lifted, the case you refer to, or rather the type of case you refer to, has nothing whatever to do with the issue. The issue in those cases was the right of the people migrating from one place to another to be recognized as being able to draw welfare bebefits from the receiving states. If we applied the holding of that type of case to the issue of residency and employment generally, we would not be saying that you, as a CPD employee, could be employed and receive a salary from the CPD but live where you liked; rather, you would be saying that you could leave the city and be entitled to receive employment and salary as a police officer, or welfare recipient, from the receiving location. Additionally, even if the issues were not distinguishable as to subject matter, the scope of applicability is different. Welfare benefits are, in large part, received from the states-even though ultimately one could make the argument that the funds really come form the central government.
...The Court held that "Americans" have the right to move, live and collect welfare anywhere they want. That brought the massive migration invasion of poor Blacks out of Southern states where....
ONE: What the hell has this to do with residency requirement?
TWO: When Blacks move its an invasion?
THREE: Blacks for the most part in the South weren't allowed to collect or receive any funds that was partially funded through those respective States.
FOUR: Most Blacks who moved in the last "INVASION" during the sixties, left for more then a welfare check....They were Bull Connor, Lester Maddox, George Wallace, church bombed, lynched and shot out of the South. Thousand of Blacks who attempted to register to VOTE, were force off of lands that they sharecrop on because they dare cast a ballot.
FIVE: Every person that is poor isn't Black and every person that is on welfare isn't Black
Telling you where you have to sleep is like telling you who you have to sleep with.
I am about to retire (163 days to go) and have put up with the residency rule for all those years. If the rule falls, Daley will be more able to reduce our benefits more easily.
I want to stick around long enough to vote Daley out!
P.S. Congrats to all the other members of Academy Class 78-1. If you are still on the job or not, may you have a long and happy retirement.
I would assume that all Chicagoland suburbs are praying the residency rules dont change. They do not want a bunch of arrogant people running around their town believing that they are above the law. I have family and friends out there who state the same. We are not looked upon as desirable neighbors to them. I can just see it now - CPD living in Palatine cutting his lawn with his pistol holstered at his side. The Suburban Police departments are holding there breath as well. "Please dont allow those assholes to move."
I for one want the FOP NOT to negotiate for residency, as we would have to give up something for it. I believe that we, the FOP, should fight this rule in Federal Court and give up nothing.
Mokena is sweeta nd cheap compared to houses here in Bevrely! Here I come a 2 acre lot with a newer home!
- CPD living in Palatine cutting his lawn with his pistol holstered at his side. The Suburban Police departments are holding there breath as well. "Please dont allow those assholes to move."
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If you want to dream, dream about your $450,000 NW side ranch really being worth $450,000.
hey hey easy on the irish we came into this country legally,signed up to fight and then took this mf'er over.....its good to be king, now get me my chalice so i can get drunk and vote some mccreep in! GO IRISH
Went thru the New Cabrini yesterday. You know, the "mixed income" 3 flats. They have signs saying you can buy one from $303,000. Having done enough RE shopping, that means no cabinets, not counter tops, not appliances, no window treatmenst...all for $303,000.
Found some upstanding black youths hanging on the stoop of one such unit.
"Hey, you live there?"
"Ya...."
"How much did you buy it for?"
"Oh, I didn't buy one, i'm leasing it."
"Really? How much is the rent?"
"$100," he replied.
A 100 bucks a month! Some poor sap bought a unit for $300,000+, but an ex-862 N. Segwick resident can move in for only 100 a month!
Aint this country great?!
10/06/2006 09:35:00 PM
My 300K N/W side house just sold for 510K. Had it for four years. 2bed/2bath 1 car garage- I dreamed and then realized. I know I had to buy something for about the same price but was able to because of my "dreaming".
Anyone know district contains the most city workers (not just cops)?????
... 015 ....(so says the SunTimes anyway)
the CRASH is coming.
don't believe me..... just ask any :
contractor
mortgage broker
material supplier
builder
home seller
OR
real estate agent IF you can get them to tell you the truth !
The FOP can't arbitrate residency. You need to tell Judy or Blago to change the state law "Home Rule". I wonder if that is a political issue that the FOP has asked these canidates about before we are asked to support them? Not that our "Fraternal Order" has the balls to do shit anyway.
To 10/09/2006 12:16:51 AM,
Good, Good, Good. Fuck the Irish scab contractors who turned the northwest side into a vinyl sided ghetto. Fuck the realtors who wouldn't think twice of loading up a broker owned six-flat with rent subsidized Fillmore animals. And especially fuck the bankers and mortgage brokers who have stuck it in peoples asses for generations- they're no George Baileys! Won't see them around the Night Before Cristalnacht! HaHaHa! have you seen what Dodge & Cox have been doing lately? HaHaHa! As long as I have my health ( I've lost my sanity) I'm a paper millionare one and one-half time's now! Boy this Spaten Oktoberfest is good! They should put a warning label on every fifth bottle!
You want to lift the residency quick and easy. With out the union giveing up concession. In the areas were most of the City workers live, we need to start running our own Aldermen for office. I think the Machine will take notice when they loose 5 or 6 Aldermen spots to us city workers.
Anonymous said...
10/06/2006 09:35:00 PM
My 300K N/W side house just sold for 510K. Had it for four years. 2bed/2bath 1 car garage- I dreamed and then realized. I know I had to buy something for about the same price but was able to because of my "dreaming".
10/08/2006 11:31:13 AM
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Who bought the hose from you?
Anonymous said...
10/06/2006 09:35:00 PM
My 300K N/W side house just sold for 510K. Had it for four years. 2bed/2bath 1 car garage- I dreamed and then realized. I know I had to buy something for about the same price but was able to because of my "dreaming".
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a $510,000 mortgage at 7% goes to $3,340 a month. That is a month's salary for me. I know no FTHB'ing cop bought it from you. But I'm sure you'll lie anyway. Ya, some kid from 015 came by......
First the FOP is not going to do anything for the working cop, they have already sold us out and we just dont even know it. They are in bed with DICK so he keeps them in a nice easy job and no questions asked. I cant understand it. One of the guys is former SOG guy or SOS to you newbees. I just hope he has not sold us out.
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