More Families Leaving Prescott (Phoenix, Flagstaff: crime, credit, home)

[DellNec]

Originally Posted by Packard fan

I'm gonna say that's true in MOST smaller towns anywhere in the US. Especially those places that are older, not near a big city AND like Observer said, no big airport, freeways and no real or any railroad connection. Prescott IS that way.

Word has it Lake Havasu City is about the same tho it's less than 50 years old.

I've visited and lived in other "small towns" and NONE of them are like Prescott/PV. You also have to remember that Prescott/PV is not really a "small" town anymore. With a population of around 50k per town, you have over 100,000 people living in those 2 towns. It's a small town compared to Phoenix but it is not a 3,000 population town anymore.

At 100,000+ people, it technically is NO LONGER a small town. Census Bureau-defined urbanized areas and urban clusters as, "An urbanized area consists of a central surrounding areas whose population ("urban nucleus") is greater than 50,000." So technically Prescott & PV is a urban area and no longer a rural or small town.

What happened in PV was that the undeveloped ranch lands became valuable in the 80's when people began moving there. The relatively inexpensive cow grazing pastures were inherited by the younger kin and that land turned expensive once growth started. They became instant millionaires, all from inheriting cheap grazing land. With Prescott, the downtown area was more densely populated, the outlying areas were very rural until the early 1980's when grazing lands further out from the downtown Courthouse became desirable and development started.

As they say, the rest is history...

[Guitarplr]

Prescott is a great place to live, If your trying to get rich though it's not the place to be. I can't wait to move to Prescott. I don't need $75,000-$100,000 a year to live comfortably. Just want to live.......

[DellNec]

Originally Posted by Guitarplr

Prescott is a great place to live, If your trying to get rich though it's not the place to be. I can't wait to move to Prescott. I don't need $75,000-$100,000 a year to live comfortably. Just want to live.......

The issue is not people trying to get rich, it's people just trying to make a living, just surviving. Which is not easy to do in Prescott.

[DellNec]

Case-in-point:

Regional economic development effort pushes for quad-city support - The Prescott Daily Courier - Prescott, Arizona

Some want to move forward and attract businesses while others are completely opposed to it. This is Prescott area politics at work. I've seen it since I moved here and since I have been involved in local business dealings.

[Kimballette]

There are plenty of anti-Prescott rant threads in this forum already. Let's stick to the specific topic, please --> More Families Leaving Prescott

[wretched wrench]

Aside from the lack of jobs and low wages, can anyone think of reasons for families to be leaving Prescott?

I'm not sure I can.

However, this situation is not uniquely Prescott, nor uniquely AZ. I knew hundreds of people who were was stuck in a big city by their job, unwilling to take a pay cut and move to a nice place like Prescott. Me, for example.

[Kimballette]

Originally Posted by wretched wrench

Aside from the lack of jobs and low wages, can anyone think of reasons for families to be leaving Prescott?

I'm not sure I can.

However, this situation is not uniquely Prescott, nor uniquely AZ. I knew hundreds of people who were was stuck in a big city by their job, unwilling to take a pay cut and move to a nice place like Prescott. Me, for example.

Well said. But if this thread doesn't focus on the topic, it becomes yet another "lack of jobs and low wages" thread. A quick look at the past year will show plenty of discussion on that topic already, which makes this thread pointless and duplicative.

Back to the topic, please.

[DellNec]

Families moved to the Prescott area because it had less crime than big cities, the natural beauty of the area, the schools are decent, the climate was moderate and it has more tolerable summers than Phoenix. The reason why they are leaving and moving back to Phoenix is simple; lack of good paying jobs. Families can't survive up here and are forced to move back to a large city.

The city politicians need to sit down and come up with a long term plan to get more families to move here and to keep the current families from leaving. This can be done by changing their business model.

Families are the key to Prescott's long-term survival.

[wretched wrench]

Originally Posted by DellNec

Families moved to the Prescott area because it had less crime........

Does anyone really know?

If so, how?

[DellNec]

Originally Posted by wretched wrench

Does anyone really know?

If so, how?

You mean the crime rate in Prescott?

It is lower than Phoenix but higher than most urban areas. That is what I read.