Brief by Central Staff
Lifestyle – May 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
Chaffee and Hinsdale counties got good grades in one portion of The 2005 State of the Rockies Report Card issued in April by Colorado College in Colorado Springs.
Among other things, this year’s study attempted to examine all counties in the Mountain West for “Civic Engagement and Capacity.” The difference? Capacity is how many books in the library; engagement is the percentage of people who use the library.
Other factors considered were charitable giving, community health, educational attainment, newspaper readership, religious involvement, political contributions, and voter participation. The counties were divided into metropolitan, rural, and “micropolitan” – a county that isn’t metro, but has a city of 2,500 or more residents.
Among the 138 micropolitan counties in the West, Chaffee got an A for Civic Engagement as it ranked 4th overall, coming in behind Teton County, Wyo. (Jackson Hole); Los Alamos County, N.M.,; and Johnson County, Wyo. (Buffalo). No Colorado micropolitan got into the top 10 for Civic Capacity.
There were 81 rural counties, and Hinsdale (Lake City) ranked first in both Civic Capacity and Civic Engagement, so of course it got an A. Custer County (Westcliffe) got an A- in Civic Engagement, and ranked 10th overall.
As for the combined Engagement and Capacity grades of our other counties, Gunnison, Mineral, and Saguache all received “incomplete” grades because the researchers could not gather all the data they needed. Alamosa got a B, Conejos a C-, Costilla a D, Lake a C-, and Park a C.
The particulars on Chaffee run like this: Discretionary Income to Charity, 7.7% (median 7.5%); 2004 Voter Turnout, 63% (61%); Population over 25 with High School Diploma, 88.5% (81.2%); Library Visits in 2002 Divided by Unduplicated Service Population, 11.2 (4.8); Political Donations in 2004 per Capita, $1.65 ($3.35); Religious Attendees as percentage of population, 12.4% (6.7%).
Hinsdale County’s top Civic Capacity score was based on Charities per 1,000 people in 2000, 12.7 (4.4), Primary Care Physicians per 100,000, 143.3 (40.6); Adjusted Education Spending per student, $5,599 ($5,743); Newspapers per 100,000 people, 128.7 (24.3); Religious congregations per 1,000 people, 5.1 (3.6).
The full 114-page report card should soon be available for purchase or download from the campus website at: www.coloradocollege.edu/Dept/EC/Faculty/Hecox/RockiesWeb/Rockies/web-content/index2.html.
When we checked at press time, it was still offering the 2004 report card, but we suspect it will be updated as soon as the organizers recover from the April 5-7 conference which accompanied the release.
