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"It's one more thing to be happy about," Geauga County Commissioner Mary Samide said Tuesday when she heard the news. "Good, great, God, green and Geauga all start with G."
The national magazine's choices were published in the June 27 edition, which ranked the top 20 American counties, with populations of 65,000 or above. Criteria included good school districts, short commutes, low crime, good recreation opportunities, cost of living and affordable housing.
Top honors went to Hamilton County, Ind., north of Indianapolis; Ozaukee County, Wis., north of Milwaukee; and Johnson County, Kansas, southwest of Kansas City.
Geauga earned fourth-place recognition because of its clean air, low crime and a high level of community investment, according to the Forbes article by Zack O'Malley Greenburg.
"A whopping 86 percent of homes are owner-occupied," the article pointed out. It also mentioned that Geauga has the nation's second-largest Amish population.
O'Malley Greenburg said the selection process used research figures by Washington-based nonpartisan research group The Tax Foundation.
The group narrowed down the number of possible top counties to 97, based on population size and those where more than half the school funding comes from property taxes. The group also eliminated counties with schools that averaged less than 1050 on SAT scores or ACT scores of lower than 22.
The magazine then ranked the remaining 51 counties based on cost of living, graduation rate, standardized school scores, housing costs, tax rates, percentage of owner-occupied units, per capita income, air quality, crime rate and commute time.
Delaware County, north of Columbus placed fifth. It was the only other county in Ohio to make the list.
Samide said she and her husband chose to raise their two daughters in Geauga County because it was safe and quiet.
"They could go out to play, and we never had to worry about them," she recalled. "That was the best thing about living in Geauga County, and that's why we moved here. Strong Midwest values pervade this area, and many Midwest counties ranked high on the list."
"We're a more conservative area, and we tend to solve our problems from within," said Anita Stocker, director of the county's Department of Community and Economic Development. "There's a lot of participation in the schools, and people actually go to the meetings and take an interest.
"We're big on not relying on government to solve our problems," she said. "We rely on ourselves to fix what's wrong."
"This honor is a reflection on the class of people who live here," Commissioner Bill Young said. "All of our local governments, the commissioners and all the county departments work together to make it work. To me, that's a significant thing."
"We tend to take for granted what we have here," county Administrator David Lair said. "When our oldest daughter went off to college, she soon realized how fortunate she had it growing up here."
