This excerpt is directly from CT Magazine

Rating the Towns 2012: 6,500-10,000

Neighboring Easton and Redding sit atop this population group like conjoined twins, sharing the Aspetuck River, Route 58, Joel Barlow High School and many of the sweet rewards that come with life in the back hills of Fairfield County. Both towns enjoy excellent school test results, with scores among the best in Connecticut, joblessness is well below the state average and crime is not a problem. On the other hand, check out the boxes on the opposite page and you’ll notice it takes $580,000 to buy a typical house in Redding, and over $600,000 in Easton.

Much more affordable is the No. 4 finisher, New Hartford in northeastern Litchfield County, where the median house can be had for less than half of what it costs in Easton/Redding, and where the schools are very good, the library is first-rate and, perhaps most impressively, the voter turnout for the 2008 presidential election was 94.8 percent, the best in the state.

Three of the towns in the Top 10—New Hartford, Middlebury and Killingworth—were in the next smaller population group when we last did these calculations two years ago. The move into a larger group often improves a town’s crime ranking, as it did with Middlebury and New Hartford. Moving down to accommodate the newbies are Haddam, dropping to No. 13 from No. 8, Durham from No. 9 to No. 16, and Lebanon, which tumbled from No. 7 last time all the way down to No. 21.

Click Here to see the stats for the Top 10 Towns.

Town	Education	Crime	Economy	Cost	Leisure	Total
1. Easton	1	5	2	24	6	38
2. Redding	2	3	1	23	10.5	39.5
3. Old Lyme	5	11	3	21	4	44
4. New Hartford	6	8	16	8	9	47
5. Middlebury	4	14	11	14	5	48
6. Litchfield	8	20	9	10	2	49
7. Essex	9	18	4	20	1	52
8. Hebron	7	2	17	11	16	53
9. Woodbury	15	6	6	19	8	54
10. Killingworth	11.5	4	8	18	13	54.5
11. Woodbridge	3	22	5	22	3	55
12. Woodstock	18	1	14	6	23	62
13. Haddam	11.5	10	13	13	15	62.5
14. Burlington	10	9	10	16	18	63
15. Portland	14	17	20	5	7	63
16. Durham	13	13	15	17	10.5	68.5
17. Prospect	20	7	19	9	17	72
18. Westbrook	17	21	7	15	12	72
19. East Haddam	16	19	12	12	19	78
20. Thompson	23	12	21	2	20	78
21. Lebanon	19	15	18	7	22	81
22. Thomaston	21	23	22	3	14	83
23. Brooklyn	22	16	24	4	24	90
24. Putnam	24	24	23	1	21	93

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HOW TO READ THE CHART
The chart at right shows the 24 Connecticut towns with populations between 6,500 and 10,000. The best possible rating in any category is 1 and the worst is 24. Remember: Low scores are good. Ties were broken in favor of the town with the higher voter turnout.

 

Rating the Towns 2012

The small Connecticut town is a cherished American icon. With its town green, leafy Main Street, white-steepled church and Fourth of July picnic, it’s a place we all feel we know, whether we live there or not. To be sure, not all small towns fit this description. Some are old mill towns, a few others are still largely farming communities. But most remain desirable places to live, raise a family or find a a place to settle down. As such, each constitutes an important piece in Connecticut’s colorful 169-town mosaic.

This ranking of Con­necti­cut’s smallest towns compares the quality of public schools, the state of the local economy, the cost of living, the crime rate and local leisure and cultural resources. Although “Rating the Small Towns” is not meant to be the last word on a town, it can be a good place to begin your thought process if you’re thinking about moving or merely seeking comparisons with like-sized places around the state.

To help make things easier, we’ve sorted the towns into three population groups, then collected all the data we could find in the areas that seem to be most important to most people. Finally, we crunched the numbers, and present on the pages that follow the rankings for towns in each population group.

Of course, we understand that there are lots of reasons for loving a place—or not loving it—that go beyond test scores at the local public school or how much money gets spent on the library. For that, we leave it to you to do your own due diligence.  
 

 

• Towns with Population 6,500-10,000
• Towns with Population 3,500-6,500
• Towns with Population Under 3,500

 

For the Towns with Population 10,000 and up, click here

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The Numbers We Used

EDUCATION: This category combines five elements: the 2009, 2010 and 2011 Mastery Test results for 4th, 6th and 8th grades; results of the 2009, 2010 and 2011 Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT); local SAT scores for 2008, 2009 and 2010 and the percentage of 2010 public high school graduates who went on to two- and four-year colleges. Test scores are weighted more heavily.

ECONOMY: The strength of the local economy was determined by the 2012 Public Investment Community score, compiled by the Office of Policy and Management, which rates all Connecticut towns under a formula based on population, per capita income, the adjusted equalized grand list per capita, the unemployment rate, the equalized mill rate and per capita aid to children.

COST OF LIVING: This category includes the median price of a house purchased from January 2010 through June 2011, a figure that predicts many other local expenses.

CRIME: This category is based on major crimes (murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor-vehicle theft) committed in 2007, 2008 and 2009—the most recent statistics available—per 1,000 population.

LEISURE/CULTURE: This category includes local library expenditures per capita in 2010 (an important factor in small towns), the number of theaters, museums, festivals, concert venues, historic sites, colleges and universities, golf courses, local newspapers, radio stations, state parks and forests, voter turnout in the 2008 election and good local restaurants.