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Is San Angelo truly the 38th-best city to live in the United States?

Has it ever been?

The claim came up during a re­cent presentation by the city’s air­port consultants — a throwaway fact gleaned from the Internet in the middle of much more substan­tive information. Money Maga­zine, the claim goes, has ranked the city No. 38 on its annual list of best places to live.

So is it true? I was skeptical.

For one thing, it’s easy to check.

CNN’s Money Magazine has a Web site that conveniently lists its Top 100 best-places lists dating back to 2005.

On the 2008 list, Plymouth, Minn., is No. 1, the magazine praising the town’s “ top-notch schools, good jobs, affordable housing, low crime (and) active outdoor culture.”

Texas’ own Round Rock is No. 8 . A Texas city is No. 38, but it’s Frisco, not San Angelo.

In 2007, Middle­ton, Wis., was No. 1 ( Plymouth wasn’t even in the Top 10 and Round Rock didn’t make the list at all; frankly, the volatility of the ratings in general makes them suspect al­together: Can cities truly get so appreciably worse or better in just one year?). The top-ranked city in Texas was Schertz , at No. 40, so no San Angelo there. 2006 ? Same story. Fort Collins, Colo., was No. 1, Sugar Land was No. 3 , and Orem, Utah , was No. 38.

In 2005 , Bainbridge Island, Wash., took home the top prize, but no Texas city finished higher than Colleyville at No. 40.

The Web site doesn’t say how long Money Magazine has been do­ing these lists, so perhaps ours is a fairly old — but still accurate — claim. An e-mail I sent hasn’t been returned.

Still, the cities populating this rating tend to be well-to- do, filled with high-paying jobs, active out­door scenes and close to big cities with burgeoning arts and culture.

San Angelo’s got a little of all that, plus fairly low crime and a fairly low cost of living, but against the towns of rural New England and the Pacific Northwest, it’s hard to see the city making it into the Top 100 when the country contains 1,800 eligible cities for such an honor.

So where did this rumor come from? Who knows?

It’s online, all right — on the city’s own booster sites: The Chamber of Commerce, the air­port, the Concho Valley Center for Entrepreneurial Development all mention it, and they all give the same time frame for this elusive ranking: “Several years ago.”

I could only find one source that places a date on the selection.

The lead paragraph to an article about health care in the left-wing political magazine The Nation focuses on San Angelo, labeling it “a sleepy town of 102,000 that still bills itself as the community Mon­ey magazine selected back in 1993 as the country’s 38th-best ‘ living environment.’ ” Fifteen years ago? Take it as you will; San Angelo didn’t have 102,000 people living here in 2000 either. The article mainly uses the city as a vehicle to criticize a shift toward for- profit hospitals and hospital- based charitable trusts, and note that it only de­scribes the ranking as something the city “ bills itself” as taking place.

So the answer is, “ Maybe.” May­be the city was Money Magazine’s 38th-best place to live once upon a time. It certainly isn’t on that list any longer.

Maybe it’s time to take that nug­get off the Web sites now.