Not Polling Well: South Milwaukee Suffers in Magazine Rankings

I love living in South Milwaukee.

Clean, safe streets. Affordable housing. Great schools. Beautiful parks. Growing industry. Strong sense of community. Convenience.

We have a lot going for us … even if Milwaukee Magazine disagrees.

The current issue ranks South Milwaukee 45th out of 50 Milwaukee-area communities in its list of “Best Suburbs.”

The Town of Mukwonago topped the list, followed by the Town of Delafield, Sussex, Elm Grove, Mequon, River Hills, Merton, the City of Pewaukee, Whitefish Bay and Cedarburg.

Rankings were compiled based on the following:

• School districts, including ACT scores, graduation rates and student test scores (South Milwaukee ranked 43rd);
• Lowest property taxes, i.e. tax rate (40th);
• Safest streets, including violent and total crime rates (35th); and
• Highest home appreciation from 2000 to 2010 and 2005 to 2010 (40th).

Not surprisingly, the ratings seemed tilted against inner-ring, industrialized suburbs like us.

For example, here is the bottom 10: Waukesha, Caledonia, Greendale, Glendale, South Milwaukee, Brown Deer, Greenfield, Cudahy, West Allis and West Milwaukee. Sense a trend?

And that’s my concern with rankings like this. Of course, communities like Delafield, Mequon and River Hills will fare better using these measures. But I can’t afford to live there, and I’m betting you can’t either. Nor do I want to give up the benefits a suburb like South Milwaukee provides, be it the level of first-class services we offer or the comparatively short commute to downtown Milwaukee.

So, is raises the question, is this a fair fight? Is South Milwaukee really peers with rural Waukesha County communities half our size? Should we really be compared with communities like River Hills?

As the article put it, “from urbanlike Shorewood to a rural hamlet like the Town of Delafield, from Cudahy’s homes with views of Lake Michigan to Oconomowoc’s homes offering access to Waukesha County’s Lake Country, there is tremendous variety in Milwaukee’s suburbs. … Some folks want rural character, others want a downtown hub; some want parks, others want a lake or river view. We decided to leave those intangibles to the eye of the beholder.”

In doing so, the perception of South Milwaukee, and communities like ours, suffers. And that’s too bad, not because it at all changes why it is great to live here. It’s unfortunate becuase others may not come to see why.

What do you think of this? Post your comments below.