Too many dang churches

Can a city have too many churches? Stafford, Texas thinks so. As an "exurb" of Houston, it seems that a city-full of metropolites have effectively compartmentalized their uses across cities, and apparently everyone wants to set up their church in poor Stafford, which can derive no property or sales tax from them.

The post suggests that revenue-sharing with neighboring cities is the only solution. Seems to make sense in the abstract: other cities are arguably getting the benefit of this arrangement, since people are doing all of their activity that generates municipal income outside of Stafford, and doing the less profitable (but still important) activity of worship in Stafford. So this is really a form of externalizing on Stafford, which theoretically other cities should pay for.

But can we quantify this sort of activity? The author argues that we must recognize that cities' land use arrangements affect more than just that city. But is moving away from our old-fashioned land use scheme a move away from traditional localism? Should we reject good olf-fashioned competition? Shouldn't Springfield forever look down its nose at Shelbyville?