Found myself up in Ananheim last night (Thursday). Hadn’t been up there in maybe 5 years. The developement, surely anchored by Disneyland, is amazing. Every square inch is filled with hotels, restaurants, shopping, etc. No shortage of customers, either. The city’s tax base/revenue must be out of sight. Anyone from that area comment on the financial condition of Anaheim?
According to this site, the per capita income in Anaheim is about $23k per year. California is about $30k.
The poverty rate in Anaheim is 14.1% vs 13.5% for the state.
Based on the info at that link, I’d say Anaheim is neither rich nor poor… Just kind of average.
The southern part of Orange County is “wealthier”. Anaheim has it’s pockets but there are definitely some poorer parts. Anaheim Hills is very nice. Basically, the lower class neighborhoods are closest to Disneyland and the upper class ones are in the hills.
What about the city itself? Would seem to me it would have more money than it would know what to do with.
I found an interesting demographic about Anaheim; there are only elementry schools (K-6) in Anaheim.
Their school superintendant is applying for that same position in Seattle.
Another good sit for information like this is City-Data.com
They cut $14 million in programs and they’re using $14.7 million in reserve funds so I wouldn’t describe them as having more money than they know what to do with.
Sounds like Atlantic City. There is one industry (Anaheim- entertainment, Atlantic City - Casinos) that appears to be very lucrative. Meanwhile, the rest of the place is struggling. Nice window dressing.
I watched the HBO documentary “Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County”. It was kind of interesting.
Anaheim Hills has some real money. Anaheim is one of the old towns of Orange County. The county was almost called Anaheim County. It’s like Long Beach and Pasadena in that it grew up apart from Los Angeles proper at an early enough time that it spread out and is one of those cities with broad diversity, as opposed to southern OC.
The eastern part of Anaheim has more money. I worked in Anaheim Hills just north of Villa Park, and you definitely had your spoiled brats. The coffee/sandwich shop owner in our complex had labor troubles because he needed to hire cheap teenage kids, but they were too well off to take the job seriously and do things like show up on time.
Western Anaheim has its working class neighborhoods with basically all recent Latin American immigrant residents, kids who start school with no English, and real problems in school performance. Since the parents often have real trouble with English, you can imagine their employment opportunities are limited. They’re not contributing much to the property taxes.
Wikipedia’s report from the 2010 census: “Hispanic or Latino of any race were 177,467 persons (52.8%); 46.0% of Anaheim’s population is Mexican, 1.2% Salvadoran, 1.0% Guatemalan, 0.4% Puerto Rican, 0.4% Peruvian, 0.3% Cuban, 0.3% Colombian, 0.2% Honduran, 0.2% Nicaraguan, and 0.2% Argentinean.[36]” This is not the “old money” Hispanics, who have been US citizens for 5 generations.
As for there only being elementary schools, PLEASE.
This isn’t correct, as Cardinal pointed out, but what may have (mis)led you to this conclusion is the fact that K-6 and 7-12 are quite literally separate school districts in Anaheim. I don’t know the full story behind this, but it appears to be somewhat common in southern California. I grew up in Texas, and had never bumped into such an arrangement there. (Many big school districts in the region are K-12, though: Los Angeles Unified and Long Beach Unified school districts come to mind immediately. I believe the Unified in a district’s name out here indicates precisely that.)
The Anaheim City School District does indeed comprise only elementary schools. The Anaheim Union High School District, whose territory appears to be a superset of ACSD’s, administers the junior and senior high schools.
The AUHSD website contains a district map page which also shows (along with a reminder that “we don’t run these schools”) a map of the various elementary school districts serving the neighborhoods that feed its high schools here.