LEWISTON — Low debt per capita, clear air and water, and short commute times pushed Lewiston into the top 20 of 150 best-managed cities according to Wallethub.com.
The personal finance website ranked at least one city from each state based on financial stability, education, health, safety, local economy and infrastructure.
Lewiston was named 13th best city overall in the ranking, claiming the No. 2 spot for municipal infrastructure and pollution, the No. 28 spot for safety and No. 52 spot for financial stability.
“I think that certainly reflects the nature of where we’re located — a great part of the state with a great environment around us,” City Administrator Ed Barrett said.
The city was ranked poorly for education, where it claimed the 127th spot out of 150. It also claimed the 136th spot out of 150 for overall health.
“We recognize that our school system faces a lot of challenges given the demographics of the community and some of the impacts it has had from special education and English language learning,” Barrett said. “I think the School Department and superintendent are working hard to improve those kinds of things.”
Portland, the other Maine city ranked, claimed the 55th spot overall and surpassed Lewiston in the education, health, safety and economy rankings, and was nearly even in the financial stability ranking.
The rankings relied on a variety of sources, including statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Moody’s Investor Research, real estate website Zillow.com, several other federal agencies and public groups, and the website’s own research.
Wallethub analyst Jill Gonzalez, contacted via email, said that her team selected the 150 most populous cities in the country that all had information from the selected sources and evaluated them across 25 categories — including municipal debt, graduation rate, the number of hospital beds, violent crime rate and unemployment.
Lewiston’s highest ranking came in the infrastructure and pollution, which compared road quality, commute times, public transportation access, air pollution, water quality and green space.
“We have been trying to invest in our infrastructure, primarily in environmental-related stuff with the water and sewer systems,” Barrett said.
Barrett said Lewiston’s ranking shows the value of city staff.
“From the day I first arrived, I’ve been very impressed with several things about this organization,” Barrett said. “One is the quality and stability we’ve had among the management team. We have very qualified people who run our departments and employees who have been committed to it for a very long time.”
He also praised Lewiston’s elected city officials who have been fiscally conservative and have worked to pay down the city’s debt.
“I think what really pushed us up in those ratings is what they call our ‘budget efficiency’ — our per capita budget totals,” Barrett said. “When you compare Lewiston to the ten largest communities in our state, our per-capita operating budget is quite low. I think that’s an indication of our efficiency and the things we’ve done over the years keep costs down.”
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