Not sure you remember way back to 2006, but that’s when Inc. Magazine had one of its lists and Bremerton ranked on it pretty high. Afterward an editorial writer for the CK Reporter wrote a blistering piece telling Bremerton to stop riding Silverdale’s coattails.
Well, Bremerton is doing it again, only this time it isn’t that Bremerton is particularly high on the list. Kiplinger.com ranks metro areas for its “Best Cities” list. The list measures how well cities maintain work in tough times, how the workforce stands to see more jobs created when the economy improves and something Kiplinger calls the “creative class” of jobs, described like this:
“Creative-class workers — scientists, engineers, educators, writers, artists, entertainers and others — inject both economic and cultural vitality into a city and help make it a vibrant place to live.”
For our area the site calls us Bremerton-Silverdale, so it looks like Silverdale is riding Bremerton’s coattails. Actually this is a classic example of what the CK reporter blast was talking about, though in this case Silverdale gets mentioned. In fact it’s clear by the population numbers that what Kiplinger is talking about is all of Kitsap County. So in this case Bremerton is riding on the entire county’s workforce, because we all know Bremerton has no steady workforce, well except for that shipyard thingy.
For cost of living we’re right at the national average. For the percentage of our workforce in the creative class, we have 29 percent, which is 139th out of 361, assuming my count is correct. Longview is around 344th with 21.6 percent. Olympia is 19th with 36.1 percent.
In median family income we’re 40th at $57,139. Seattle-Bellevue is tops in this state at $61,740, which is 22nd in the country. Yakima is in the neighborhood of 290th with a median of $40,321.
In salary growth, and this won’t surprise anyone skeptical of government, Olympia is sixth in the country at 22 percent between 2004 and 2008. Lewiston, Idaho-Washington is about 340th at 2.5 percent. Kitsap gets in at number 86 with a 9 percent jump in salaries.
Imagine how well Bremerton would have done if it didn’t have to carry Port Orchard. Zoing!
I heard that back when Bremerton got the “Most Liveable City” award that the officials looking over the city actually stayed at the Silverdale Hotel and went on a shopping trip to Kitsap Mall. It seems that without Silverdale’s young workforce, great schools and retail presence…no “city” in Kitsap would make ANY list!
Too bad Silverdale doesn’t count. They don’t even have their own government. Silverdale isn’t a city, it’s a shopping mall.
Great school district though. Can’t argue with that.
Bremerton isn’t exactly all that, but Silverdale is just a big shopping center. A crappy one at that. Aside from the schools, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to live there.
We miss Binnion ~ THE NINJA’S