BISBEE — The first phase of a project that was introduced in fall 2005 by the Cochise Community Foundation is completed.

The Cochise County Quality of Life Index, a collection of data designed to serve as an informative tool for residents, government, businesses, and community leaders, was presented to the Cochise County Board of Supervisors during a work session on Monday.

The index is made up of data that provides Cochise County with current baseline conditions of 25 issues, organized in five categories.

Carol Sanger, who is the Arizona Community Foundation Southeast Regional Director, provided supervisors and work session attendees with background about the index, how it evolved and how the different indicators were determined.

In late 2005, the Community Foundation approached Cochise College and the county supervisors with the idea of creating a quality of life index, Sanger said. The plan was adopted and in 2006 a steering committee of community leaders was established to help determine what issues should be measured and how to measure them.

“The college, county and Community Foundation are committed to maintaining the index for 19 years,” Sanger said during her presentation. The index will be updated on Sept. 30 every year through data collected by the Cochise College Center for Economic Research. Trends will be tracked and compared from year to year, serving as valuable benchmarks for future generations.

 “The three partner organizations encourage the community to provide feedback on this effort,” Sanger said. “This is a very rare and worthwhile project, a flexible model that will grow and change through the years.”

Cochise County is the only region in the state with a quality of life index in place, Sanger added. “This will serve as a tool for people who want to understand the community they live in.”

In an effort to determine which issues were important to people in Cochise County, the Center for Economic Research conducted a random telephone survey of 400 residents where they were asked to rank issues on a 0 to 10 scale, based on importance to that particular respondent.

Initially, the model contained 24 indicators, which fell within four main index categories. But a revision was made to the initial model, where a new section that included children, families and seniors was added.

The model now contains five primary index categories, along with the 25 indicators. 

Robert Carreira, director of the Center for Economic Research, crunched numbers and compiled the data, which he presented at the work session.  Numbers presented in the report, Carreira said, come from data collected in 2007 and 2008. When looking at different indicators to determine the overall quality of life in Cochise County, Carreira said the most pressing issue today is the economy.