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Every year thousands of spectators gather in Dale City to witness the largest Fourth of July parade in Virginia. Soon enough, they'll have another reason to flock to the city: The Americans in Wartime Museum, a $110 million project, is under construction. Its opening will bring additional jobs to the city, whose residents mostly commute to Washington, D.C. The trip is a bit lengthy, but the Virginia Railway Express trains that run through Dale City do their part to ease congestion. --E.R.
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.
(II) Sales tax notes:
California (1%) and Virginia (1%) levy mandatory, statewide add-on sales taxes at the local level; these are included in their state sales tax rates. Arlington is a county without any incorporated municipalities. However, we treat it as a city here because it is included in the Census Bureau's annual list of incorporated places.
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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