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Macomb locals can boast of their town's fiscal strength: With more than $29 million set aside for a rainy day, Macomb Township is the most financially solvent city in the state. Low property taxes and a median home price of $185,000 help explain why this city is Michigan's fastest-growing major municipality. Since most of the population commutes to Detroit, Macomb doesn't have a downtown, but it does have lots of parks, outdoor community centers, and sports courts. -- L.M.
Notes:
*County data
Due to erroneous job, cost-of-living, and test score stats for a small number of places, this city's rank changed slightly from an earlier version.
Details.
Due to an error by our data provider, an earlier version listed incorrect stats for this city's number of colleges.
(3) Crime incidences are estimates based on FBI 2011 Universal Crime and incidence reports, OnBoard analysis.
(I) Income tax notes:
17 states have statutory provision for automatically adjusting to the rate of inflation the dollar values of the income tax brackets, standard deductions, and/or personal exemptions. Massachusetts, Michigan, and Nebraska index the personal exemption only. Oregon does not index the income brackets for $125,000 and over. Because the inflation adjustments for 2012 are not yet available in some cases, the table may report the 2011 amounts. In Michigan, includes an additional exemption of $600 for children age 18 and under. Tax rate scheduled to decrease to 4.25% on 10/1/13.
Using statistics from data services company Onboard Informatics, we crunched the numbers in order to zero in on America's best small cities for families. (Last year, we looked at small towns, with populations between 8,500 and 50,000.)
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