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Notes from Linda
Quality of life – that’s what everyone wants and deserves. It is the reason many of us moved to Colchester and that is why it is so important we use that quality measure when we look at the development of the community and other economic issues. Economic improvement of Colchester has to be a priority. Why? To lessen the tax burden that residents are shouldering, increase services and goods available in town, and provide more job opportunities to our residents. Those factors lead us back to our quality of life going forward.
Newspapers have been writing about our commitment to development of business parks in the past weeks. However, alongside that commitment are others that may not attract news attention but are equally important and that is our commitment to Colchester’s small businesses and farms. Without all of these, our quality of life is lost.
We all know that Colchester is going to continue to grow. That growth is inevitable because of our location, our strong schools and the fact that in comparison to other communities many can still afford to locate here. But our growth has to be about balance. We cannot focus on just one area or one aspect and ignore others. We recognize no one person has all the answers; thus, we have created the task forces for Main Street and Lebanon Avenue, the Elderly Tax Relief Task Force, the Business Development Task force. We are supporting the study we are in the process of regarding protecting and supporting our farms.
We are doing all of this while supporting the new regulations governing business parks. We must move forward and work together to ensure that Colchester does not fall behind other developing towns as residential tax payers everywhere suffer from the increasing tax dependency on their real estate. Colchester continues to be one of the fastest growing towns in the entire state of Connecticut. But our residential growth has become an issue due to the lack of affordable housing, low amount of commercial tax payers, and overwhelming numbers in our school system. Current plans will contain both growth and sprawl.
As with all issues, we also have to balance our housing needs. The housing that will be made available through the rezoning and future development is practical and beneficial to the entire Colchester community. It is housing that we hope our children graduating from college and who want to move home can afford. Let’s face it, that has been an issue we have struggled with for many years now. We need to recognize that there are seniors who want to sell their houses and live in areas that are within walking distance to central services, but don’t want to live in 55 and over housing. There are young professionals who will benefit from one or two bedroom condominiums that are part of the plan.. When you think about it, all of New England’s downtown areas are “mixed use” as
proposed by this plan – Merchants Row, Lebanon Avenue, Broadway, Mystic, East Hampton, Mystic, … all are mixed use downtowns.
We are bringing people together to work on the future of their town. We have to, because we need everyone’s point of view to reach the balance we need.
For more information, or to become involved in any of our activities, please call my office at 537-7220, or email me at selectman@colchesterct.gov. As always, my office door is open; please stop by and say hi!
I wish all of you a safe and happy new year.
Sincerely,
Linda Riley Hodge
First Selectman
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