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Natural springs first drew visitors to this town 17 miles west of Milwaukee, but these days there's plenty more good stuff spilling out of the streets of Waukesha. Fridays during the summer, the downtown streets are closed to auto traffic and residents roam leisurely while the music of local bands fills the air. The city recently used tax incremental financing to help two major local corporations expand, creating 300 new jobs in the process. --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.
(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. The Wisconsin income brackets reported are for single individuals. For married taxpayers filing jointly, the same tax rates apply income brackets ranging from $14,090, to $310,210.
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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