Palmer errs on residency ordinance

Tuesday night the Palmer City Council approved an ordinance that allows managers on the city payroll to live anywhere they want.

This from a town that has long said it is trying to attract business and industry that will bring in high-paying jobs. What hypocrisy. The city has high-paying jobs and allows those paychecks to go to other places where the money supports businesses and communities other than Palmer.

In addition to the plea for better jobs, Palmer has also promoted itself has a town with a high quality lifestyle. Apparently, though, that lifestyle isn’t good enough for its own employees.

It’s no secret that the best places to live might not be in Palmer proper, but there are plenty of nice homes within a short drive that would satisfy even the most selective homebuyer. If not, there are plenty of builders, Palmer builders, who would love to build one on a nearby lot for the discriminating city employee with deep pockets.

Palmer schools are as good as any in the state. So if employees are looking for a good education for their children, that shouldn’t be a concern. Those schools also offer wonderful extracurricular activities that would be even better with new participants.

Palmer city officials are in the early stages of trying to annex more property into the city limits. That’s a legitimate goal because Palmer is land-starved and could use more property that would allow it to expand its tax base.

In that light, though, what are they telling their prospective new citizens?

We want you to join us in living in this fine place, but we don’t expect our managers to live here. If you want to contact them at home, that will be a toll call.

Anybody who lives in Palmer and pays taxes there — and shops nearly exclusively there — should be upset with the passage of this ordinance. All of a sudden they look like second-class citizens in a second-class town.

That’s an image Palmer has been battling for years. The hick farm town on the wrong highway.

This ordinance reinforces that lie.

All the city council members, save Brad Hanson, should be ashamed. So should City Manager Bill Allen and Mayor John Combs who have always before promoted Palmer as a great place to live. And it is.

Now they talk with two tongues.