By Tony Sandleben—
MUNCIE, Ind. – The City of Muncie is partnering with TMap and the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) to encourage remote workers to move to Muncie.
TMap is a national company that runs a website called MakeMyMove.com that helps remote workers relocate to where they would like to live. Now, they are helping those people relocate to Muncie. The program expects to recruit up to 45 remote workers and their families to move to Muncie in the next five years. TMap has done work like this with other cities in Indiana like Lafayette which has already seen 19 remote workers move to its community as a result of the program. Based on what Lafayette has seen, they believe about half of the workers will be single and half will come with families. Those families could include children who could enroll in our schools and spouses who could join our community’s work force.
The economic impact could be up to $4,059,000 in Muncie by 2023. Those numbers can be broken down into local tax revenue of $2,300 per person, state tax revenue per person of $4,900 and consumer output per person estimated to be $83,000. All of that comes out to a total of $90,200 a person in economic revenue from this endeavor.
Mayor Ridenour has been working with the MakeMyMove team since August when the mayor set up a group of Muncie residents to assist TMap in putting together the marketing campaign for Muncie. The campaign highlights some of what sets Muncie apart from other cities in Indiana and across the country. A sample of their work can be found below.
https://www.makemymove.com/get-paid/muncie-indiana
Click the image for a larger view.
The city and the state are working together to fund this project. Both will be contributing $250,000 to fund the program. The city’s portion will come from the Mayor’s EDIT Funds.
“We have a great community in Muncie,” Mayor Ridenour said. “This MakeMyMove program has had considerable success in other cities like ours. It is a great way to highlight that we are cost-effective, have a large university, that we are the retail, entertainment and education hub of East Central Indiana with a focus on park improvements. MakeMyMove says it allows people to get paid to do what they love in a place that they love. I believe Muncie is that place.”
MakeMyMove says it will start promoting Muncie next week.
