Want to get more for your money? Take a look at our chart below. On it we list the 10 Dane County suburbs where your home-buying dollar also buys the most of the suburban good life. To get this list, we compared the median cost of a home in each of our suburbs to the overall composite score each suburb received. The result is an index of affordability - how much each of a community's composite score points costs in terms of home-buying dollars. Mazomanie, for instance, ranked 10th in composite points. But here it garnered the top spot, thanks to a mid-range overall score and the lowest median home price of all the suburbs.
When we set out to assess the quality of life in the suburbs, we knew that finding key, measurable characteristics about each community would be only a first step. Once we'd identified those characteristics, we knew we'd also need to understand which were most persuasive when people chose a place to live. After all, everybody cares to some degree about tax rates, crime rates, quality of schools, real estate costs, and so on. But without a more sophisticated analysis--one that could tap into people's opinions and concerns--we knew our assessment wouldn't reflect how much people cared about each of the measurable characteristics.
 To get such an analysis, we turned to a survey of Dane County residents that we and WISC-TV 3 had commissioned in 1999. The survey had been designed and conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is still one of the best and most comprehensive such surveys done in Dane County.
As part of the survey, UW-Milwaukee's Center for Urban Initiatives and Research conducted telephone interviews with 300 Dane County residents (the sample gave us a 95 percent confidence that the results would be accurate, asking nearly 40 questions about the quality of life in Dane County. The survey allowed us to rank the factor that people felt was most important, second in importance, and so on. Those rankings appear in the explanations of each category that follow.
Demographers at UW-Madison's Applied Population Laboratory then took the results of the survey and constructed a mathematical formula that applied the relative importance of each characteristic, adjusted to a standard measure, against the real numbers we'd gathered in each category. Here's an example: Nearly 98 percent of the people surveyed said crime was somewhat or very important to them in choosing where to live. It ranked No. 2. The mathematical formula allowed us to assign a weight to crime, giving it slightly more importance than the next most significant factor. Next the Population Lab applied that weight to our data. Monona, for example, has the highest crime rate among the suburbs. Since crime was a high concern in our survey, and since the rate of crime is relatively higher in Monona (and yes, we'd like to note here that Monona's crime rate would not be high when compared to much of the rest of the nation), the formula gave Monona a low score in that category--21out of 21. Black Earth has very little crime, so it ranked No. 1 in the category. Finally, the formula yielded a composite score for each community, and the community with the highest composite became No. 1 overall, the second highest became No. 2, and so on.
Now, a caveat. As everyone knows, numbers can both enlighten and deceive. A classic example of both, perhaps, is Maple Bluff, which landed in the bottom fifth of this ranking. It's counterintuitive that a suburb that's every bit as prestigious and sought-after as top-ranked Shorewood Hills is, would rank low. So a couple of things are worth pointing out. According to the numbers we compiled, homes were slightly slower to sell in Maple Bluff than in Shorewood Hills last year, and property taxes were a click or two higher. The scores in each of the categories can--and does--change from year to year. Finally, it's all relative, anyway, isn't it? Is the bottom-ranked suburb in Dane County really a bad place to live? We'd be the first to say, not by a long shot. There is little more than a 10 percent spread, after all, between the No. 1 and the No. 21 suburb, and the No. 21 suburb is in fact the No. 17 suburb, thanks to some ties. Also, in some cases the difference between suburbs is measured by only one point, and in three cases there is a tie for the same score.
Here, then, are explanations of how we gathered and used the numbers. (For each category, note the numbers at the end. The first number is the weight, expressed on a scale of 10. The second number is from the survey and it ranks in importance from one to 11.)
Population: This isn't really a category--that is, a community's population didn't count for or against in the scoring system. We just thought you'd want to know, and since it's reported in this year's survey, we thought we'd also tell you that we got our numbers from the Dane County 2003-2004 Directory, with additional information (namely, how many of their residents lived outside Dane County last year) from the villages of Belleville and Cambridge.
Avg. Household Income: Another category-that-doesn't-count. This is the averaged adjusted gross income, per tax return, reported for each community by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue 2002 County and Municipal Revenues and Expenditures report.
Appreciation: Looking at the median price of homes sold in each community during 1999 and 2003 gives us the average percent by which that community's home values appreciated or depreciated during the four-year time period. The South Central Wisconsin Multiple Listing Service Corporation provided the raw numbers for this and the following two categories. Weight: 8.9. Rank: 8.
Resale: A quick survey of the average number of days that homes were listed for sale in each community during 2003. Homes sold fastest in Shorewood Hills, Belleville and Monona, and slowest in Cambridge, Sun Prairie and Cross Plains. Weight: 8.7. Rank: 10.
Housing: A real-world figure: the median price of homes actually sold in each community during 2003. Lower is better, and Mazomanie is still the best: The median price of a home there is only $140,750. Weight: 9.7. Rank: 3.
Crime: The Wisconsin Office of Justice Assistance compiles statistics from police departments across the state on index crimes--violent crimes, property crimes and theft--committed in their jurisdictions. With two exceptions, we selected our data entirely from these reports; in the case of Cross Plains we received our data directly from the local police department and in the case of Cambridge we receive our data from the Dane County Sheriff's office. Figures from the currently available 2002 Office of Justice Assistance report were used and reflect the number of crimes committed per 1,000 population. Weight: 9.9. Rank: 2.
Property Taxes: Property tax rates compiled and reported for 2003 by the Dane County Treasurer's office were multiplied by the cost of a $150,000 home. Now you know how much or how little you'd pay in property taxes on the same home in 21 different communities. Weight: 9.6. Rank: 4 (tied with government services spending).
Government Spending: Local government spending is tracked in the Wisconsin Department of Revenue County and Municipal Revenues and Expenditures report. We used the most recently reported statistics of 2002 and excluded the amount spent on police, fire and other public protection, as well as the spending devoted to parks and green space, and culture and education. Then we divided by population, and applied the optimistic concept that the more money government spends on services, the better the people are served. Weight: 9.6. Rank: 4 (tied with property taxes).
Schools: The state Department of Public Instruction provides data on a myriad of school and student achievement measures. We used the most recent complete report, the 2002-2003 School Performance Report. To address our survey respondents' concerns about academic quality, class size and more, we selected the following categories: student-to-teacher ratios; reading levels of 3rd-graders; high school graduation and dropout rates; average scores on the ACT and the statewide 4th-grade, 8th-grade and 10th-grade concepts and knowledge exams, and the percentage of drug- or weapon-related incidents that resulted in student suspension or expulsion. Some things to keep in mind: First, student-teacher ratios may seem low, but all teachers, even teachers of physical education, art and music, are included. Second, an average of the percentage of 4th-, 8th- and 10th-graders who scored "proficient" or "advanced" on the knowledge and concepts exams is the number that appears on our schools chart. And finally, the state reported the drug- or weapon-related incidents as a single number, but in our informal and admittedly incomplete survey of the school districts we didn't find any incidents that actually related to weapons; we feel safe in saying that the vast majority of the incidents reported by DPI are, in fact, drug- and/or alcohol-related. Finally, all the data were standardized by the Population Lab and combined for an overall school score. Communities served by more than one school district reflect either the score of the dominant elementary, middle and high school, or an average that is representative of the different schools serving a community. Weight: 8.8. Rank: 9.
Safety: Using the Wisconsin Department of Revenue 2002 County and Municipal Revenues and Expenditures report, we divided the amount each community spent on police, fire and other public protection in 2002 by population to get our per capita figure. Again, the theory is that the more a community spends in this category, the safer its citizens are. Weight: 9.9. Rank: 1.
Parks: It's not possible to track the exact acreage of which portion of our federal, state and county parks lie within which municipal boundary. We chose to look, instead, at the amount a suburb invested, per person, in parks, recreation, conservation and development, as reported by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue 2002 County and Municipal Revenues and Expenditures report. In this category, too, more is better. Weight: 9.2. Rank: 7.
Culture: This used to be our "libraries" category, the one where we reported whether a suburb had its own municipal library. We did so because 93 percent of our survey respondents said it was important that they live near a public library. The thing is, most Dane County suburbanites do live near a public library--their own community's or one of Madison's, or a satellite of the Dane County library system's. So we decided to expand this category to include not just libraries but spending that supports libraries and other types of suburban cultural and educational opportunities. This amount is tabulated in the Wisconsin Department of Revenue 2002 County and Municipal Revenues and Expenditures report. The more a community spent on this category, the higher they scored in it. Weight: 9.5. Rank: 6.
Pools: Only 59 percent of our survey respondents said municipal pools were important to them. But in Madison a public pool remains only a tantalizing possibility, so we surveyed our suburbs for yes-or-no responses to the pool question. Having a pool earned No. 1 in the category and not having one dropped the suburb to 15 in that category. Weight: 6.0. Rank: 11.
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