I created a discussion topic at the new forum now available at www.spfld.net focusing specifically on the question of how much actual dollars are lost forever from the city's economic cycle, by employees who work for the city, but live and spend their money in other communities?
The question of residency requirement in Springfield, Illinois is especially important because the city has it's own utility company, City Water Light and Power, which generates money from it's private sector customers as a revenue source that helps pay the salaries of city employees.
If municipal employees live outside the city of Springfield, in the realm of other utility companies, merchants and services that have private sector employees that live in other communities, The potential tax revenue that might have been generated for the city of Springfield is lost forever, which means that real money is slowly and permanently being siphoned out of Springfield, Illinois' economic circulation.
Money is already being siphoned permanently away from Springfield when people choose to buy anything that was not manufactured locally. When you look at money in terms of an environmental cycle, like the hydrogen cycle, for example, it becomes clear that survival based on the money cycle is limited and is dependent upon new money flowing in faster than it leaves.
New money flowing in faster than it leaves is entirely up to businesses. If businesses pay wages high enough, the tax revenues generated should produce services and infrastructure that is attractive enough to draw in more businesses. Unfortunately, businesses will only pay employees what the government forces them to pay employees. The government employees have organized and demanded to be paid more than the city is willing to tax the private sector because the private sector can leave.
The consequences is a crumbling infrastructure which becomes so unattractive that the only way to compensate is to pay exorbitant salaries to the professionals needed for the survival of the community, who would otherwise leave, in the fields of academics, health, finance, engineering, etc.
But the habit in Springfield is this: If you can afford it, live outside of the city.
The city of Springfield, much like most municipalities, is becoming an economic crater. The only difference is that inevitability of collapse is slowed by money generated from the city's own utility company, CWLP. The evidence of a crumbling infrastructure can be clearly seen in the architecture of the buildings surrounding the state capitol, and the odor rising up from the open sewers on 13th street and other older areas of the city.
