I’ve been a Newark resident for 16 years and I have always been curious to the Newark/Heath relationship. My first question is, “Why do we need to cities?”. If it wasn’t for the city limits signs, a visitor wouldn’t know that they are separate cities. Until the red light controversy, I never gave it much thought as to where I would go to do business. Yet here sits 2 city bureaucracies that could have costs reduced by combining them into one.

I realize that big cities have subdivided and that it all makes sense, but those divisions grew from center-out increase, with land use as the primary divisive factor. Newark/Heath is just 2 nearly identical cities that are side by side.

To add to the mystery, we are now starting to turn into twin cities. This must be a good thing for business because virtually everything Heath has is now being duplicated. The only business Newark seems to be missing is a mall and a movie theater.

I like having the options to have everything closer and I suppose that the proximity even creates inter-regional competition among a franchises businesses. For example, have you ever been to the McDonald’s in downtown Newark and compared it to the restaurant in Heath? Same business, totally different service, and that’s just from the most generic hamburger restaurant ever known.

The red light camera controversy really showed the power of the twin city effect. We could vote with our feet and in the end it shut down the red light camera. Regardless of your support for the camera’s, you could not dispute the power that this has on other issues. People were more willing to put up with the 21st street driving nightmare than to risks $100 fines from a questionable unmanned camera system.

I hope that as the 2 cities evolve, our choices will be as to which one is better and not which is the lesser of 2 evils. I really like the Roosters or Leghorns choice as opposed to a dangerous traffic area or a big-brother traffic area.

When Stealing, Please Be Real Nice About It