Nice to live, ok to work,
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9/16/2008
Right in town you have 2 lakes with nice public beaches. The people are mostly friendly, and the summer events, concerts, and recreation is pretty great. Our local parks department is well funded and the department of sanitation keeps the place looking great.
The school is about as good as any, the High School is one large community school rather than several large ones, which leads to an institutional feel for the campus. There are lots of alternates though, so its easy to work with.
Jobs aren't bad, but the median is deceptively high. Many jobs are low to fair wage, but you also have a small amount of extremely high wages which inflate the averages due to the orthopedic companies here (4 of the top 5 in the world, one group of people started Zimmer, then they all broke up and formed competing businesses, all with world HQ here.) Several other large companies have factories or headquarters here with plants, which diversifies the community work force, which is a good thing considering many communities around here have had their town foundry/plant/whatever close and it killed the town as 1/2 or more of the population worked there.
We've had lots of small businesses close shop in-county in late 2007 through 2008 due to economic downturn.
To offset, at least crime is low, and drugs/gangs are much less a problem here than elsewhere, and larger department stores are moving in frequently. Decent shopping is to be had in county, but better shopping is in either South Bend or Ft. Wayne, each less than an hour away in opposite directions.
All in all not a bad place to live, and cost of living is still low with many amenities.
George | Warsaw, IN