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PIKES PEAK REGION, COLO. -- Many people love to work and play in the Pikes Peak Region, but just how well does the area stack up to the rest of the country?

The 2010 Quality of Life Indicators report for the Pikes Peak Region was released Monday, highlighting both the good and bad about the region.

The report was put together by the Vision Councils, a group of more than 150 community leaders created by the Pikes Peak United Way in 2006.

Monday the group released its fourth edition of its Quality of Life report containing more than 100 pages of charts and graphs.

"Here are the statistics, here are the facts. This is the data, this is what it shows. What can we as a community do now to take it to the next step and put some programs into action?" Lisa Bachman, PR and Marketing Chairman, said.

In this year's report experts identified six areas in the community earning gold stars and 11 areas raising red flags.

"We do look at red flags not as negatives so much as areas of opportunity for improvement," Bachman said.

One of the red flags is unemployment.

"We have 90,000 more people in our region but the same civilian employment as we did 10 years ago," Bachman said.

According to the report the unemployment rate for Colorado Springs sits at nine percent. But experts said they have been seeing an increase in companies interested in coming to the area.

"We're working aggressively to bring any kind of job into the community and help those companies in our community now grow,' Mike Kazmierski, President & CEO of Greater Colorado Springs Economic Development Corporation, said.

Another area of concern is the number of domestic violence and child abuse reports.

"El Paso County has consistently been one of the highest counties in the state for reported child abuse and domestic violence," Barney Luppa, District Court Judge in El Paso County, said.

But experts said that number could be skewed because of the large amount of young people in the area.

"If you assume that these incidents occur with families in the age of 20-35 our community demographically have a higher number of people in that age category largely due to the military.So if you look at it from that perspective I think that we're probably more normal than people realize," Luppa said.

A quick response time for emergency medical services and a 35 percent reduction in the amount of waste going to landfills since 2005 earned gold stars in this year's report.

2010 Quality of Life Report (part 1)
2010 Quality of Life Report (part 2)
2010 Quality of Life Report (part 3)