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Tri-Cities Tops 'BestPlaces' List
~From Tri-City Herald article June 15, 2005, written by Jeff St. John~
If you’re scared of crime, unemployment, hurricanes and tornadoes, consider making the Tri-Cities your No. 1 choice for a midsized community to live in. That’s exactly where Farmers Insurance put it on its 2005 list of the Most Secure Places to Live.
The list, compiled by Portland-based demographic research firm Sperling’s BestPlaces, put the Tri-Cities on top in its category of cities with 150,000 to 500,000 population, beating out other Washington contenders [such] as second-place Olympia and fifth-place Bremerton. Crime statistics from 2003, as well as the past incidence of hurricanes, tornadoes and other more predictable “extreme weather” events over 50 years, were the most heavily weighed statistics, said BestPlaces President Bert Sperling. Unemployment figures from last November and the record of other less common natural disasters like earthquakes received less weight, he said.
The Tri-Cities came in 27th on the list of most secure cities of all sizes in 2004, BestPlaces first such list, Sperling said. It also placed 114th on his firm’s well-publicized “Best Places to Live” list of last year. “It’s a snapshot in time,” Sperling conceded about his firm’s list, and the Tri-Cities’ performance may have slipped a little since the list’s statistics were collected. For example, major crime rates increased across the Tri-Cities from 2003-04, with Kennewick reporting a 16 percent rise, Pasco a 14 percent rise and Richland a 10 percent rise. But jobs statistics have improved since November 2004, when unemployment stood at 5.6 percent in Benton County and 9.5 percent in Franklin County. That’s compared with May 2005 unemployment rates in Benton and Franklin counties of 5 percent and 5.7 percent, respectively. Also, the list did not take into account the potential for environmental contamination or accidents at the Hanford nuclear reservation or Umatilla Chemical Depot, Sperling said.
Still, “That’s a pretty good performance for a city of your size,” he said. His firm’s lists are “picked up and published everywhere. There’s a real appetite for people to discover how cities compare to one another.” That’s why the Tri-City Visitor & Convention Bureau has posted the news prominently on it’s Web site, said Kris Watkins, bureau president. “I think it gives us a lot of credibility when it comes from an independent source,” she said. Carl Adrian, president of the Tri-City Industrial Development Council, agreed it’s a good piece of information to give to businesses considering the Tri-Cities for a new home. “Those kinds of things, as they begin to get our community broader attention in national markets, are very positive,” he said. “Not to mention the fact that it’s positive we’ve been ranked that way.”
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