FFHMPR Demographics Subcommittee Working Document October 15, 2010 The role of demographics for our committee
We need metrics for ensuring that our survey(s) and other forms of public input appropriately represent the town (i.e., respondent data will be weighted to reflect the real-world demographics of our community)
o Assumptions behind survey:
t;color:#000000;">Marital status
household income
households with children under 18 at home
households with children in the Newtown Public Schools
People who voted in the last budget referendum
Working assumptions re: overall, long-term town population for better strategic planning
Our Position: To better understand the long-term strategic uses for the Fairfield Hills property, we believe that an estimate of population based on the build-out of the town, as modeled in the Planimetrics document, tempered with more recent information from other population sources (see above), provide a reasonable set of assumptions for us to proceed with1.
o Our POV regarding the two population projections: The two highly different views provided in the documents strongly suggest that the underlying models are extremely sensitive to recent historic trends. The first, the “Population Projections for 2000-2030” document essentially views the future through the lens of the tail end of a time period rife with housing speculation. The “School Enrollment Dynamics & Projections 2010-2019” document extends the economic realities seen during an unprecedented recession through to 2020. Both population studies show example routes to eventual build-out. In our opinions, an estimate of the final population at build-out, not the actual route to build-out, is
pertinent to the work of the committee.
1 Note that this courser level of granularity removes reliance on highly random variables seen in the nearer-term population studies. Such variables can and do change dramatically over time. Trying to account for them long-term is beyond the scope of the FFH Master Plan Review Committee’s objective and would not add any new insight for our purposes, in our opinions. FFHMPR Demographics Subcommittee Working Document October 15, 2010
o Leveraging Planimetrics Build-out Expectations:
size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Calibri;font-size:8pt;color:#000000;">Zoning regulations: Our belief is that zoning will change to allow more housing units, rather than fewer, i.e., the calculated number of housing units would increase.
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