Madison Mayor Paul Finley greeted a visitor at his city hall office recently wearing a Rocket City Trash Pandas jersey.
It made perhaps an unintended statement.
Finley was soon leaving to participate in a charity event and wanted to promote the minor league baseball team he helped bring to the Huntsville suburb. Along the way, it underscored the fact that Madison was recently named one of the nation’s top suburbs.
Minor league baseball has helped distinguish Madison, a prospering city with Alabama’s 10th largest population at 56,933 but in the shadows of Huntsville – the newly-crowned state’s largest city that has encircled Madison through years of annexations.
And while Huntsville is a fixture on national “Best Places to Live” lists, those lists typically focus on larger cities. Compared with peer cities, however, Madison found solid footing on a list of its own.
Money Magazine, in its list of “Best Places to Live 2021,” ranked Madison No. 12 nationally. Its last appearance on the list was in 2009 at No. 49.
“I think everybody here knows just how special this place is,” said Finley, who last year was reelected to his third term. “But to me, it really is the validation from outside sources looking from the outside in, at what is quality of life. And so when you’re ranked in the top 50, but especially right at No. 12, and you see the cities that you’re in with, it really is kind of special.”
The Money Magazine list focused primarily on suburbs and with no other Alabama cities on the list, Madison laid claim to the best suburb in the state. The magazine said it focused on cities with populations of less than 500,000 – which would include every city in Alabama – and considered traits such as cost of living, economic opportunity, education, cost of living and quality of life, among others.
The top five cities from 2020 were also not considered for the list.
In its description of Madison, the magazine touted the city’s unemployment rate of 2.9 percent as the second lowest of any city on the list as well as software company Hexagon PPM having its headquarters in Madison and employing 1,100 people.
Madison’s average household income of $93,000 is 35 percent higher than the national average, the magazine said, and the city’s cost of living is lower than the national average as well. For fun, the magazine pointed to the city’s 38,000 square foot skate park, its 24-player laser tag arena and, yes, the Trash Pandas.
“It is an honor,” Finley said. “There’s a lot of people over the course of the last 20 or 30 years that have continued to work hard to get us there. But I’m pretty excited about it.”
Chanhassen, Minn., outside Minneapolis tops the Money Magazine list, followed by Carmel, Ind., Franklin, Tenn., Flower Mound, Texas and Ashburn, Va., at No. 5. Nos. 6-10 are Syracuse, Utah, Overland Park, Kansas, Centennial, Colo., Scottsdale, Ariz., Ellicott City, Md. And just ahead of Madison at No. 11 is Waukee, Iowa.
Some other Deep South cities on the list are Nashville suburbs Hendersonville (16) and La Vergne (26), Atlanta suburbs Peachtree City (24) and Woodstock (31) and Memphis suburb Olive Branch, Miss. (23).
What wasn’t mentioned by Money Magazine was Madison’s school system. Finley pointed out that 37 students from the city’s two high schools, Bob Jones and James Clemens, were recently named National Merit semifinalists. The 19 scholars from Bob Jones and 18 from James Clemens were the most of any Alabama high school.
Finley also said he took pride in the fact that two of his three sons returned to Madison after graduating from college.
“As a dad who’s now raised those boys, who gone through college on scholarships because the schools were so good, the incredible part about that is the jobs are so plentiful here. They’re back here and there’s no better feeling than having your kids successful and, at least to this point, home.
“And so all of that together is what all Madison residents recognizes. We don’t want to leave, but we’re so glad that they want to stay.”
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