With an average Crime Severity Index score of 52.5, Coaldale ranks as one of the safest municipalities between 8,000-11,000 residents in Canada.
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Last month, the Town of Coaldale officially released its 2022 Comparative Analysis, which compares Coaldale’s operational and financial performance to the operational and financial performances of eight other similarly sized and/or neighbouring municipalities: Blackfalds, Drumheller, Edson, Innisfail, Lethbridge, Lethbridge County, Ponoka, and Taber.
Except for the Town's 2019 Comparative Analysis, the Town's previous analyses focused on evaluating these performances across five distinct benchmarks: total revenues & operating expenditures; taxation and assessment; assessment growth; population growth; and executive compensation. This year's analysis, however, introduces two new benchmarks – one of which is crime severity.
“In years past, the Town's analyses have focused on comparing Coaldale to its peer and neighbouring municipalities across five, essentially financial, benchmarks”, said Cameron Mills, Director of Growth and Investment for the Town of Coaldale. “But because we know crime is an area of significant interest to our community, we’ve added crime severity to our analyses moving forward. We know crime can impact other measures in the analysis like property values and population growth, and that it also has significant impact on overall quality of life, so we want to be sure our readers understand where Coaldale fits in relative to other municipalities in terms of the frequency and severity of crime that does occur in the community.”
According to Statistics Canada, Crime Severity Index (CSI) scores are based off the number of crimes reported by police in each jurisdiction, as well as the relative seriousness of those crimes. As a result, if a jurisdiction has a high proportion of less serious crimes (which are weighted lower), it will have a lower CSI score. Conversely, if a jurisdiction has a high proportion of more serious crimes (which are weighted higher), it will have a higher CSI score. Canada’s CSI score is always 100, which means that municipalities with a CSI score of above 100 are less safe while municipalities with a CSI score of below 100 are safer.
As the data in the analysis reveals, when it comes to crime severity Coaldale stands out for being the safest community among both its peer and neighbouring municipalities.
“To control for fluctuations in CSI scores – which can change significantly from one year to the next – we decided we’d calculate a 5-year CSI score average for each municipality in the analysis”, explained Mills. “What we found was that over the last 5 years, both violent crime and non-violent crime in Coaldale have remained, on average, relatively low making it the safest community among both its neighbours and peers. In fact, with an average CSI score of just 52.5, Coaldale ranks as the safest municipality its size in the province, the 3rd safest municipality of its size in western Canada, and the 7th safest municipality of its size in the country. That’s good news for our residents and a major selling point for the Town.”
To read the Town of Coaldale’s 2022 Comparative Analysis, please visit:
https://www.coaldale.ca/ComparativeAnalysis.