Behind the Numbers: How We Determined the Best Communities
LeeAnn Chen, GoLocalProv News Contributor
Behind the Numbers: How We Determined the Best Communities
In evaluating the 39 cities and towns of Rhode Island, GoLocalProv looked at five broad categories: affordability, economic condition, education, safety, and arts and culture, which were further broken down into indicators of how well the cities and towns performed in each area.
To evaluate the affordability of the city or town, GoLocalProv applied a relatively standard set of formulas, incorporating data on median housing price, tax rates, and median household income. GoLocalProv used down payment percentage, mortgage rate, hazard insurance, and private mortgage insurance rate data from HousingWorks RI. Together, these data generated monthly mortgage payment amounts, monthly property tax payment amounts, typical monthly housing payment amounts, and household income required to afford a house. The actual affordability percentage is a ratio of median household income to household income required to afford a house.
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It was difficult to decide on the most representative indicators for economic condition, but GoLocalProv decided to keep it simple, looking at both the median household income and the effective tax rate, as assessed by the State of Rhode Island Municipal Finance Department of Revenue.
For education, GoLocalProv evaluated the most basic levels, using 4th, 8th and 11th grade reading and mathematics NECAP scores for the 2009 testing year. Like its Top Schools Ranking of high schools, GoLocalProv looked at the percentage of students at Level 3 (Proficient) or Level 4 (Proficient with Distinction), which signifies students’ ability to meet or exceed grade-level expectations.
Safety is high on everybody’s priority list, so GoLocalProv wanted to make sure the sources were reliable. Therefore, we first looked at the FBI 2008 Crime in the United States tables for Rhode Island, which broke down crime into two main categories, violent crimes (murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault) and property crimes (burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, arson). The total offenses in these two categories signifies crime incidence, and, to take population size into account, GoLocalProv compared the ratio of crime incidence to population.
For arts and culture, GoLocalProv took into account the availability of restaurants and bars (from GoLocalProv’s directory), theaters, museums and galleries, libraries, and golf courses. The availability of different venues where residents can experience local arts and culture is an important indicator of the liveability of a city or town, and was weighted accordingly.