Editorial: We see a different Las Vegas than how the city is perceived

Sunday, June 21, 2015 | 2 a.m.

When it comes to being family-friendly, Bakersfield trumps us on fun?

People love top-10 and top-100 lists of popular places — those very subjective rankings that tell us the best places for honeymoons, for retirement, for dog parks, for schools. It’s easy to criticize them if the place where we live ranks poorly, but we endorse the rankings if they reflect on us well.

Take last week’s rankings, for instance, of “best and worst cities for families,” as judged by various members of academia, on behalf of the website WalletHub.com, which spits out lists and rankings on myriad topics.

(You probably know where this is headed, but we’re feeling feisty today, so stick with us.)

Among the 150 most populous cities in the United States, Las Vegas ranked 131, making it more worse than better for being conducive to a healthy and happy family life.

These rankings make no sense to us.

We’re fine that Overland Park, Kan., came in No. 1; it is a lovely, safe, upscale suburb of Kansas City, Mo., with many family-friendly amenities. And if the three worst cities are Detroit, Mich., Birmingham, Ala., and Jackson, Miss., well, so be it.

In the overall ratings, Henderson landed in the top half — No. 61, just below Vancouver, Wash., and above Spokane, Wash. North Las Vegas ranked No. 117, just below New York City and three notches ahead of Chicago.

Here’s how Las Vegas came in at No. 131 (with Augusta, Ga., and Tucson, Ariz., just above us, and Montgomery, Ala., and Oakland, Calif., just below us): We ranked 23rd for fun family activities and 70th for affordability, but 76th for socioeconomic environment (such as divorce rates and household income), 147th for education and the high cost and poor quality of child care, and dead last among the cities for health and safety (including crime, lack of health insurance and poor air quality).

But we see a different Las Vegas, one that we’re proud of despite the challenges we face. We see a city with parks and ball fields, a performing arts center with an adjoining children’s museum, Boys and Girls Clubs, incredibly talented performers at Las Vegas Academy, youthful scholars all across the valley who excel at a global level in robotics, technology, engineering and math, and national merit finalists who go to the finest universities in the country.

Scoff all you want at our desert environment; we fielded the country’s best Little League baseball team last year (after the Chicago team was stripped of its trophy for sneaking in ineligible players). We have one of the country’s finest youth ice hockey teams, which flew to Canada to play in youth hockey’s equivalent of the Little League World Series. And, as you may have read in last week’s edition of The Sunday, we have a volleyball team of girls 12 and younger that was invited to play this month in a national championship in New Orleans.

Here’s another reason we question the ranking. In the category of fun and family activities, which included parks and playgrounds, minimal commute times to work and the percentage of families with children, coming in No. 1 was Bakersfield, Calif. Really? Have you ever heard a kid say, “Hey Mom and Dad, can we move to Bakersfield? Huh, can we?”