A Great Place to Live

The community-wide efforts in Sioux Falls to maintain one of the healthiest environments in the nation in which to live, work and raise a family are making headlines. The sample of accolades below reinforces the Sioux Falls area's vitality as a regional and national leader in economic development, retail sales, health care, manufacturing, financial and business services and quality of life.

For the fifth straight year, the Pollina Report named South Dakota as one of the nation's top 10 pro-business states, ranking No. 6. The Pollina Corporate Top 10 Pro-Business States is a comparative evaluation of job creation and retention efforts of all 50 state governments and the federal government. States are ranked and evaluated on 29 factures, including: taxes, human resources, right-to-work legislation, energy costs, infrastructure spending, workers' compensation legislation and jobs lost or gained. The list is published annually by Chicago-based Pollina Corporate Real Estate. South Dakota placed No. 7 in 2007.

Organic Gardening magazine named Sioux Falls fifth on its list of nation's cities working to make neighborhoods healthier and more sustainable (February/March 2008 issue). The country's 50 largest cities and the largest cities in each state were graded on nine different points, including air and water quality, green space, number of U.S. Green Building Council-rated buildings, availability of locally grown food and the percentage of households with flower or vegetable garden.

Sioux Falls ranked No. 9 on Moody's Economy.com Business Vitality Index that rates the overall economic vitality of a metro area by looking at a range of factors rather than just one measure. The 2007 index takes into account current economic conditions such as household income growth, factors that affect prospective conditions including labor availability and regional cost structure and potential risks such as employment volatility.

Sioux Falls' tap water is among the cleanest in the country, according to Forbes.com. In a report published in spring 2008, Forbes ranks Sioux Falls' water the third cleanest in the country, behind only Des Moines and Austin. The rankings are based on levels of the cloudiness of water; bacteria; haloacetic acids, a byproduct of drinking water disinfection; and lead. To create the list, Forbes.com examined data from consumer confidence reports provided annually by community water systems and compiled by University of Cincinnati researchers in 2006 in its "United States Drinking Water Quality Study Report."

South Dakota was the only state to post rising sales of existing homes in the last quarter of 2007. According to the National Association of Realtors, South Dakota sales of existing homes increased 8.9 percent.

South Dakota ranked among the top three states for technology in K-12 classrooms, according to Education Week's Technology Counts report released in March 2008.

Sioux Falls was included in Fortune Small Business's inaugural list of the 100 Best Places to Live and Launch. Cities were ranked on a range of criteria, including housing prices, schools, cultural and recreational attractions, quality of labor force, taxes and regulatory climate. The city was lauded for its business-friendly tax structure and ranked No. 45 overall. (April 2008)

Between 2006-07, the city of Sioux Falls increased its population by 2.5 percent, again making it the fastest growing metropolitan area that's completely in the Midwest, according to figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. Nationwide, Sioux Falls ranked as the 36th fastest growing metro area.

Sioux Falls was named one of the top nine most handicapped accessible cities in America by the National Organization on Disability in 2007.

Sioux Falls is ranked No. 5 among the nation's least-costly, mid-sized metropolitan areas to do business, according to KPMG LLP, the audit, tax and advisory firm. Of 14 U.S. locations with populations between 100,000 and 500,000, Sioux Falls ranked fifth for lowest overall costs to do business. Sioux Falls, with a cost index of 97.4 (about 3 percent below the U.S. national average), was helped by the second lowest property tax rates among cities in its category. KPMG's 2008 Competitive Alternatives study measured 27 significant cost components that are most likely to vary by location, including labor, taxes, real estate and utilities as they applied to 17 industries, over a 10-year planning horizon. Data on a variety of non-cost competitive factors also was compared. The study enables companies to perform a "quick scan" of jurisdictions to determine which can offer a cost-competitive business environment. In 2006, the city placed seventh in the survey.