Rating the Towns 2009: Cities 10,000-15,000

Where is the good life in Connecticut? It's just about everywhere if you go by the results seen in this population group, where towns from six different counties (Old Saybrook/Middlesex, Weston/Fairfield, Granby/Hartford, Tolland/Tolland, Orange/New Haven, Ledyard/New London) finished in the top eight spots.

Old Saybrook holds on to its No. 1 position by virtue of its good schools, low crime rate, sturdy local economy and leisure activities that are unusually numerous for a town of its size (to which they've just added a new performing arts center).

Second-place finisher Weston would be very hard to beat were it not for that median house price of $830,000-even though that figure represents a drop of $135,000 from the last time we conducted this survey.

Speaking of which, it is almost shocking to see how far house prices have fallen since 2006 in some of these towns. Old Saybrook's median dropped from $390,000 to $289,000, New Fairfield went from $396,000 to $307,000 and Ledyard sank to $225,000 from $266,000, to name a few examples. Elsewhere, Colchester improved in every category, but especially Crime, to move up from No. 18 to No. 12; conversely, Ellington had worse numbers across the board as it dropped from No. 5 last time to No. 14; neighboring Tolland, meanwhile, made a nice move from No. 8 up to No. 4.

Overall Rank	Town	Education	Crime	Economy	Cost	Leisure	Total Score
1	Old Saybrook	6	5	2	19	1	33
2	Weston	1	1	1	23	8	34
3	Granby	2	6	6	18	6	38
4	Tolland	9	4	10	14	10	47
5	New Fairfield	5	2	3	21	17	48
6	Orange	3	18	4	22	3	50
7	Suffield	4	17	5	13	13	52
8	Ledyard	13.5	7	16	10	7	53.5
9	Somers	8	9	9	20	9	55
10	Clinton	13.5	16	7	17	2	55.5
11	Cromwell	12	19	12	9	5	57
12	Colchester	15	10	13	11	11	60
13	North Branford	16	8	11	15	12	62
14*	East Hampton	10	3	18	12	20	63
14*	Ellington	7	11	15	16	14	63
16	Stafford	11	12	19	5	19	66
17*	Coventry	17	13	14	8	16	68
17*	Windsor Locks	21	21	8	3	15	68
19	Derby	23	23	22	6	4	78
20	Plainfield	22	14	20	1	23	80
21	Griswold	20	15	17	7	22	81
22*	Plymouth	19	20	23	4	18	84
22*	Winchester	18	22	21	2	21	84

*tie

HOW TO READ THE CHART
The chart above represents the 23 Connecticut cities with population over 50,000. The comparisons are made only with other towns in this group. The best possible rating in any category is 1 and the worst is 23.