U.S. News “best” rankings come in for the Ocala-Marion metro area

This month, “U.S. News & World Report” released its anxiously awaited 2023-2024 Best Places to Live List. These coveted rankings have been touted for years by economic development organizations nationwide as a marker for how attractive their communities are to live, work and play.

Locally, the Ocala-Marion County Chamber & Economic Partnership and elected officials have used the metro area’s positive rankings in the various categories over the years as selling points to business prospects and potential homebuyers.

The results this year, however, are a mixed bag for our region.

Of the 150 metro areas in the U.S. News’ Best Place to Live rankings, Ocala has climbed to No. 67 for 2023-24 after dropping from No. 58 in 2021-22 all the way to No. 91 in 2022-23.

Since last year, the area has slid from the sixth Fastest Growing Metro category to the seventh.

In the Best Place to Retire category, the region has slid from No. 6 in 2021-2022 to the No. 16 spot for the past two-year lists.

However, one key category—the Safest Place to Live—illustrates a significant problem with how U.S. News receives the data it then uses to create its lists.

U.S. News creates its rankings by using data from several sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the FBI, the U.S. Department of Labor as well as the magazine’s own internal resources. The data is then categorized into five indexes and evaluated using a methodology determined by Americans’ preferences, according to the U.S. News website.

According to the U.S. News website, the percent weighting for each index follows the answers from a March 2023 public survey in which people from across the country voted for what they believed was the most important factor to consider when choosing where to live.

In the 2022-2023 list, Ocala slid from No. 4 to No. 10 in the Safest Place category, where we remain for a second year. This important ranking, however, must be viewed with some skepticism because of changes in how Florida now collects crime statistics.

Since 1930, the FBI has relied on its Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program to generate reliable statistics for use in law enforcement. According to the agency’s website, the FBI has historically collected data from “more than 18,000 city, university and college, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies” that “participate voluntarily and submit their crime data either through a state UCR program or directly to the FBI’s UCR Program.”

But law enforcement agencies were notified a few years ago that starting in 2021, reporting requirements would be expanded to allow law enforcement agencies to report more detailed information. The transition has caused a delay in many law enforcement agencies across the country reporting their details and created questions about the methodology used in the UCR.

“The New York Times” reported at the close of 2022 that while crime in Florida fell to a 50-year low in 2021, according to statements by officials, “experts say the report comes with big caveats amid a muddled, incomplete picture as law enforcement agencies in Florida and across the United States shift to a new system to tally crime.”

This is the case locally. The last crime index posted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for 2021 only included statistics from the Dunnellon and Belleview police departments.

The “Gazette” asked the FDLE if the Marion County Sheriff’s Office or the Ocala Police Department had reported their numbers.

Dana Kelly, communications coordinator for the FDLE, explained in an email to the “Gazette’’ that agencies were in varying stages of transitioning based on many “factors (IT support, software product, vendor support, software age capability, etc.)” and that “transition time will vary, and there may be time periods when data is not available for some agencies. This may result in incomplete or partial reporting for certain publication periods. Complete UCR reporting will resume once all participating agencies have successfully transitioned to incident-based reporting.”

Kelly provided the “Gazette” with a link to what MCSO and OPD reported to the FDLE for 2021 and 2022. At first blush, MCSO data seemed wrong because it only reported one murder in 2021 and one in 2022.

MCSO Public Information Officer Zachary Moore confirmed that the data FDLE provided to the “Gazette’’ was inaccurate. In the case of homicides reported by MCSO, there were 24 in 2021 and 14 in 2022.

“MCSO has a number of crime reports that are unable to be submitted through FDLE’s online reporting software for a variety of reasons,’’ he wrote in an email, “but principally there is a dysfunction with FDLE software where it will not allow MCSO’s reports to be accepted due to a coding issue. (When trying to submit these reports, an error message is returned.) In order to be able to submit these reports, the FBI must first resolve an issue with crime data reporting codes, then FDLE must update their reporting software to accept the codes, and, finally, SMARTCOP (our records management system) must update the codes in MCSO’s reporting software. Only after those steps are complete, MCSO can then submit the remaining unaccepted reports for them to reflect on FDLE’s spreadsheet. Presently, there is nothing we can do to submit the unaccepted reports, although we periodically attempt to submit them in hopes that the coding issues have been resolved.”

Moore added, “In a perfect world, FDLE will have accurate FIBRS (Florida Incident-Based Reporting System) data and we expect that to occur in the near future. However, the data in the spreadsheets should not be relied upon until the issues are remedied. Until then, we will be happy to confirm whether FDLE’s FIBRS data is accurate and will let you know when that occurs.”

The OPD did not respond to an inquiry from the “Gazette” about their crime reporting.