NU Online News Service

Farmers Insurance Group of Companies has named Las Cruces, N.M.,and its surrounding metropolitan areas--Mesilla, Hatch and SunlandPark--the "Number One Most Secure Places to Live in the U.S."

The designation came after a survey in 2006. Las Cruces and itssurrounding metropolitan areas were ranked in the medium-sizecities category, the company said.

The survey studied 379 U.S. municipalities which were dividedinto three groups--large metropolitan areas, midsize cities andsmall towns, said Farmers.

On Friday the mayors of each municipality will be presented withmost secure city recognition plaques by Farmers New Mexico StateExecutive Craig Allen, at a luncheon in the Las Cruces Farm andRanch Museum.

The rankings, compiled by bestplaces.net--an analyzing datacompany on people and places--took into consideration unemployment,crime rate, severe weather, environmental hazards and risk ofterror threats in each municipality, said bestplace.net PresidentBert Sperling.

In terms of insurance rates, many cities surveyed had higherinsurance rates, said Mr. Sperling.

"Hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes affected insurance ratesin the areas we studied," he said. "Crime risks were also a majorcomponent to insurance rates..." Local government and stateorganization performance are also factors for insurance rates inmany of the cities surveyed in the study.

"When you have an excellent local government and stateorganizations working together, you end up with a city with goodexperience, and over time that would affect insurance rates," saidFarmers' spokesperson Jerry Davies.

Metropolitan areas included in the study were given points foreach criterion based on their relation to the other metro areas'scores in that data category, the survey report said.

The most significant data element for any given categoryreceived a score of 100 points. The data element for each categorywhich was associated with the most negative indicator of securityreceived a score of 0 points, the survey said.