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Just a week after Pleasanton was ranked No. 4 in a recent survey of America’s 50 Best Cities to Live, two other national surveys have given the city similarly high marks.
Money Magazine has included Pleasanton on two of its annual Best Places to Live lists. Pleasanton came in at No. 31 on the publication’s list of the Best Places to Live 2014, and was also recognized by the magazine as No. 9 in the country for its economic vitality.
Pleasanton came in No. 9 in the magazine’s designation as one of the Top Earning Towns in its list of the 50 Best Cities to Live, with the publication noting the city’s high median household income and its top-notch schools.
Last week, a survey of America’s 50 Best Cities to Live In conducted by 24/7 Wall Street, a nationally recognized online website targeting investors and the business community, place Pleasanton in the No. 4 position nationally.
That list was profiled in an article in the nationally-circulated daily newspaper USA Today and was also talked about on “Live with Kelly & Michael” morning television show on ABC.
The Money Magazine list of Best Places to Live is compiled in a months-long process that begins with 781 cities with populations of 50,000 to 300,000, and is trimmed down to just 50 cities. The final list is based on data such as education, crime rate, economic factors, cultural arts and recreation, and quality of life.
“Our primary goal as a city has always been to provide the highest quality of life for our residents and our workers,” according to Pleasanton City Manager Nelson Fialho. “It is very rewarding to see Pleasanton and its schools recognized as among the best in the nation.”
Pleasanton ranked highest on safety, with a 97.4% score in the category, not surprising considering that violent crime per 100,000 residents is 68.2.
Education in Pleasanton garnered another high score, at 91%, and the survey narrative describes local students as “having access to a high-quality education, with secondary students performing well above the state average in math, language arts, and science last year.”
The website nerdwallet.com ranks Pleasanton Unified School District among the Top Ten school districts in California, and both of the city’s comprehensive high schools consistently rank among the Top 100 High Schools in California by U.S. News and World Report.
Economic indicators were also factored into the formula to determine America’s 50 Best Cities to Live In, and Pleasanton ranked high in this category, with an 84.7. The median income in Pleasanton ($112,000) is among the highest in the country, and the unemployment rate in the city is just 3.7%, one of the lowest rates nationwide.
Several large business parks, including Hacienda, a business park that is the largest in Northern California, provides employment for more than 40,000 workers in the city.
The high employment is complemented by Pleasanton’s central location, at the axis of Interstates 580 and 680, and with two BART stations, giving it an average commuter travel time of 28.9 minutes.
I was surprised to learn that our VIOLENT Crime rate is over 60/100,000
meaning that our town of 70,000 had over 40 violent crimes?
i subscribe to Weekly and don’t recall many stories of violence.
According to the survey, Pleasanton experiences less than one violent crime per week. These include robbery, aggravated assault and forcible rape in addition to murder and certain manslaughter crimes. It is not unusual to find one of these crimes reported each week, perhaps not murder and manslaughter but certainly an occasional robbery given our large number of retail businesses. Pleasanton neighborhoods are extremely safe, and as long as residents take caution with the regular and usually respectable looking door-to-door “salespersons” more often than not casing your house for a possible theft, we are very safe and we are very fortunate to have such a professional police force to help keep us that way.