Re: The High Cost of Fragmentation Archived Message
Posted by catching12 on December 20, 2010, 1:52 am, in reply to "Re: The High Cost of Fragmentation"
I found your answers on the first page from Google. Pretty easy. There are countless examples, ranging from Winston-Salem to Freemont, California, all the way up to New York City. Those are just examples of merged municipalities. Annexation is severalfold more common. Your questions were rather trivial, as the answers are obvious for most. Taxes, schools, and operational departments would presumably be run in consistent fashion across the city. Spending would be a sketchy issue, but I presume it probably would not be any different than other large cities where spending is generally focused on the areas with the most promise, although law enforcement is certainly an exception (look no further than StL and its North Side). Taking a page from my conservative side, I'd also say that it would eliminate government overhead. There would be fewer municipal administrators and city workers, which I believe is beneficial to any taxpayer. And to be completely honest, even if it had never been attempted, I would not care. This area has nothing to lose and has been, overall, in terminal decline for the past few decades. If you wish to harbor that StL-esque attitude of "Where did you go to high school?" then so be it and continue to accept that division is detrimental to growth (just look at the inner-belt).
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