By Scott Buttram
The consumer finance website nerdwallet.com has ranked Trussville as the 10th-best city in Alabama for young families. Trussville and Vestavia Hills, ranked seventh, were to only two Jefferson County cities to make the top 10.
“Trussville is a suburb of Birmingham in Jefferson and St. Clair Counties,” the article said. “Students at Paine Primary and Paine Intermediate placed in the top 10 in the nation in a reading competition held by Scholastic; the students were among the most voracious readers in the country, with nearly one million minutes logged by the elementary students and nearly 1.5 million by the middle school students. The city school system is also the community’s largest employer.”
The criteria for the rankings included schools, affordability and growth. The website defined each category as follows:
- Does the town have good public schools? We measured schools’ academic performance with ratings from GreatSchools. This non-profit compares a given school’s standardized test scores to the state average to obtain a rating on a 1 to 10 scale (10 representing the highest score). Higher ratings led to a higher overall score.
- Can you afford to live there? We looked at both median home values in each town and ongoing monthly home costs, including mortgage payments, real estate taxes, insurance costs, utilities, fuel and other bills. Lower costs led to a higher overall score.
- Is the town growing and prospering? We assessed a town’s economy by looking at average household income and income growth over the last decade. Higher income and greater growth led to a higher overall score.