Locals Disagree with Magazine Rankings; List Makers Admit Flaws

NORTH WILDWOOD — Bob Maschio, North Wildwood councilman and president of Coastal Broadcasting, believes that the resort communities in Cape May County, particularly those on Five Mile Beach, were unfairly slighted in a recent magazine list of the best (and worst) places to live in the state.
In late February, New Jersey Monthly published its biannual list. Wildwood was ranked last out of the state’s 566 municipalities. North Wildwood (553), Wildwood Crest (482) and West Wildwood (479) also finished near the bottom of the list.
At a March 2 council meeting, Maschio addressed a concern expressed by James “Koch” Kochowicz, who took offense to a Herald article reporting the New Jersey Monthly list.
“How come we’re so far down on this list?” Kochowicz asked.
“A lot of it has to do with the population in the summertime,” Maschio answered.
He explained that the list took into consideration the crime rates in the towns and that the island communities have unusually high crime statistics because of the huge population increases during the summer season.
In the New Jersey State Police annual Uniform Crime Report, seasonally adjusted annual mean populations are used to calculate crime rates in resort municipalities due to their large seasonal influx of residents. The list didn’t use those numbers and the Wildwood’s and other coastal towns were affected.
“We have a tourism economy and this is how unfortunately numbers get skewed in that particular scenario,” Maschio said.
“That magazine doesn’t take into consideration any of that. Quite honestly, Jim, if we listen to that magazine we would all be better off in Camden,” he said.
Camden was ranked 481 on the list; Newark, 544; Trenton, 539; Jersey City, 402; Atlantic City, 548; and Pleasantville, 530. All better places to live than Wildwood or North Wildwood, the magazine would have readers believe.
“It kind of makes you feel not too good about it,” Kochowicz said.
North Wildwood Administrator Ray Townsend noted that “whatever statistics or whatever measurement or yardstick they used, you can do that with anything. You can make anything look good or bad depending on what you choose to print.”
“This ain’t right, you know what I mean. I know it’s not right, because I live here right in North Wildwood and I like it here,” Kochowicz said.
“No I don’t like it here let me change that,” he said. “I love it here.”
A reader of the original story on the Herald Web site likely agreed with Kochowicz, making the following comment:
“I would like the survey to be more representative to some other important criteria: scenery, special events, friendliness of townspeople, best local businesses, no traffic…North Wildwood ranks tops in my book in these criteria…the reason why we live here.”
Maschio tried to put the list in perspective for Kochowicz.
“It’s only one article in a magazine that nobody cares about down south,” he said. As a counterpoint, he noted another study in which CNN rated Cape May County as the number one second-home destination in the country.
When the Herald spoke with Maschio later, he called New Jersey Monthly a “North Jersey magazine.”
“The numbers were so skewed against the resort towns, the list doesn’t mean anything,” he said.
According to New Jersey Monthly, the Monmouth University Polling Institute produced the list for the magazine, using eight “quality of life” criteria: population growth, home values, property taxes, land development, employment, crime rate, school performance and proximity to services (hospitals).
Representatives from both the magazine and the university, however, admitted that the list wasn’t perfect.
Patrick Murray, director of the Polling Institute, said he wouldn’t call the New Jersey Monthly list a poll or a survey, but rather an analysis of available data.
He agreed that Wildwood and the other resort communities scored lower in the analysis because of their crime rates.
“We see the list as a snap shot of how the communities are doing using a variety of categories meant to measure quality of life,” he added.
Some of the factors have slightly more weight than others based on how large the range was between scores, Murray said. Property taxes, for instance, meant more in the analysis than the number of hospitals, he said.
Even though hospitals weren’t weighted as heavily as other factors, it still didn’t help the municipalities in Cape May County that are within 10 miles of between one and three hospitals (Cape Regional, Shore Memorial and AtlantiCare) depending on their locations. The state average in the data analysis was four hospitals and some towns are near 15 or more.
Murray explained to the Herald that the towns were ranked using the eight categories on a scale from 1 to 51 points. He said most New Jersey municipalities scored between 18 and 30 points with none scoring below 15 and none above 33.
He said towns were compared to a “typical New Jersey town” median.
“So while there was a pretty big difference between number one and number 566, there was not a lot of difference between numbers 100 and 400. He said a mere two-point difference could separate number 74 and number 250.
“We provide this information to New Jersey Monthly,” Murray said. “Monmouth University doesn’t call it the best places to live list, the magazine does.”
New Jersey Monthly Editor Ken Schlager said that while some of the indicators tended to work against resort communities such as Wildwood, “different factors work against towns in every part of the state.”
He noted that property taxes in certain areas are much higher than they are in this county “and that affects those towns negatively.”
“I understand the shore towns because of their seasonal populations, get hurt in a number of ways,” Schlager said. “What your readers should understand is that while some things work against their towns in the summer, there are other factors that work against towns in every part of the state.”
He noted a few things in Wildwood that resulted in its being at the bottom of the list.
“Median home sales price went way down in Wildwood, 27 percent,” Schlager said. “The state median was 11 percent.” He also noted that Wildwood’s property taxes went up 21.9 percent, while the state average was 7.9 percent.
The New Jersey Monthly list is published every two years, and Wildwood has been near the bottom on both of the previous lists. In 2008, the city ranked 520 and in 2006 it was 441.
Wildwood Mayor Gary DeMarzo did not return calls regarding this story. He did however tell the Wildwood Leader, “a lot of these categories just can’t be applied fairly to towns that rely heavily on tourism…they’re still not looking at what affects us most in a beach community, which is the influx of summer visitors.”
He was quoted as saying these types of article are just “conversation pieces for a magazine, but they can have an impact on a community.”
Contact Hart at (609) 886-8600 Ext 35 or at: jhart@cmcherald.com