OUR VIEW: City should stop coveting Austin

A group of civic leaders recently traveled to Texas in pursuit of an increasingly aggressive effort to make Colorado Springs more like Austin, the home of an economist who advises our community on economic development.

Austin is a lovely, musical city that pays companies to make it their home. It is the capital city of the second-most populous state, and home to the University of Texas. Yet Colorado Springs is probably a nicer place to live and a better place to do business. It seems a group of civic leaders from Austin could learn a lot from Colorado Springs.

When out-of-town quality of life experts ran the data, Colorado Springs wound up the city all others should covet. The editors of Outside magazine, based out of Santa Fe, N.M., and New York, have declared Colorado Springs the best city in which to live. This top-tier commercial magazine, with circulation of more than 600,000, reaches exactly the kind of educated, healthy professionals modern CEOs hope to attract. The fact Outside ranks Colorado Springs as the best place to live is an enormous plus in attracting primary employers, because it tells CEOs they will have no trouble attracting the best talent if they relocate here.

“This spotlights our community in a positive way, in exactly the niche we’re trying to promote,” said Mike Kazmierski, executive director of the Colorado Springs Economic Development Corp., who sent the Outside news to 150 national relocation consultants.

In the same exact analysis of data, Austin ranked as the fourth-best city. So think about it. Community leaders have set a goal of making Colorado Springs as attractive as Austin. Yet a major magazine, which crunches numbers in order to tell its customers the best places to live, says Colorado Springs is better than Austin.

The magazine based rankings mostly on standard objective economic data such as percentage of the population with college degrees, and income level in relation to home prices. It also evaluated cultural sophistication, educational institutions, climate, and overall quality of life factors. If Pikes Peak were an economic statistic, Austin could not come near us on the list.

It’s not the first time Colorado Springs has outranked Austin. Three years ago, Money magazine ranked Colorado Springs as the best large city to live in. Austin came in second.

None of this should surprise anyone. As the editors of Outside said: “Numbers don’t lie.” Here’s one of many important distinctions between Colorado Springs and Austin: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 12 percent of Springs residents live in poverty; in Austin the number is 18 percent. Any comprehensive look at key economic data shows Colorado Springs ahead of Austin. Mostly it’s a result of fiscal responsibility.

Incredibly, most civic leaders seem hush-hush about the Outside designation.

More than a week past the day Colorado Springs was declared the best city in the United States, the city government’s Web site had made no mention of it.

“I checked with Dee, who does our Web site. She has been given no direction to do anything with this, so we probably won’t be doing anything,” said Julie Smith, one of the city’s public communication specialists, on Thursday.

The award should be bannered at the top of the city’s home page, but it apparently won’t find mention even in the “news” section, along with headlines about an arts festival and the launch of a “Stormwater Project.” Once again, a city bureaucracy heavy with public relations personnel appears light on public relations.

The Gazette also found no mention of this award on the Web site of the Greater Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce.

Why the underwhelming enthusiasm? Ponder three possibilities:

1. Our civic leaders have poor marketing skills. If this is true, it might explain why Wikipedia’s Colorado Springs entry, in its listing of the country’s 50 largest cities, has long been left with a crummy skyline picture taken from west of downtown and therefore devoid of a mountain backdrop.

2. This award embarrasses some local leaders, who have invested in trying to make America’s best city more like America’s fourth best city.

3. Positive news about our city’s quality of life does not fit political claims that Colorado Springs has become a place of deterioration and hardship because of the Christian right and stingy voters who will not raise taxes. One council member recently argued Colorado Springs could wind up like Detroit; this award does not bolster his claim.

Whatever the reason, it is a shame our civic leaders will not make simple efforts to tell the world our city is the best place to live. If they would do that, we might see more economic development and high-paying jobs.