It has a composite score of 102 (NOTE: US average = 100), compared to 109 of Las Vegas, Nevada, 110 of Denver, Colorado, 118 of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and 147 of Los Angeles, California. The cost of living in the East Valley is quite low for such a thriving area. This figure is also higher than the median price of a single family home in Metropolitan Phoenix, the West Valley, all of Arizona, and the United States. The median sales price of a single family home in the East Valley is $205,850. The 2011 median household income is also higher in the East Valley than Metropolitan Phoenix, the state of Arizona, and the entire United States. The 2011 median household income in the East Valley was reported $64,659, up from $52,100 in 2000. The East Valley experienced a population increase of 41 percent, going from 937,638 in 2000 to 1,324,922 in 2011, according to U.S. Today, its services are offered to 10 school districts. What had once been the Mesa Vocational School was given a new name and an East Valley-wide tax base. Ten years after the regional concept was introduced, it was politically institutionalized with the state legislature's creation of the East Valley Institute of Technology. 'Back then everything seemed to be going to Phoenix.' 'My dad and a number of East Valley businesses wanted to have the East Valley equivalent of the Phoenix 40,' John Whiteman, who followed his dad as head of the prosperous dealership, told the East Valley Tribune. One of the founders of the partnership was the late Jack Whiteman of Empire Southwest, a heavy equipment company. That group was named the East Valley Partnership, an organization of business, education and political leaders that continues to advocate on behalf of the East Valley and its cities. Wahlheim approached Chandler grocery-chain owner Eddie Basha and asked him to help create a business group to be the East Valley's answer to the Phoenix 40. A group called the Phoenix 40 heavily influenced the region's politics and business matters affecting the entire region. Mesa was the next biggest city with a population of 152,404, followed by Tempe with a population of 106,919. In 1980, Phoenix dwarfed other cities in the region with a population of 789,704. A newspaper publisher, Charles Wahlheim, started using East Valley in the Mesa Tribune, Chandler Arizonan, and the Tempe Daily News - newspapers purchased by the Cox newspaper chain out of Atlanta - as a marketing device aimed at giving his company's newspapers creditability as alternatives to the powerful Phoenix-based Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette.

Metro Phoenix is in the Salt River Valley, which has been marketed as the Valley of the Sun.

The term 'East Valley' to describe that part of Metropolitan Phoenix east of the city of Phoenix emerged in the early 1980s. 8 Past attempts to secede from Maricopa County.

3.3 East Valley Institute of Technology.

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