Norfolk rated number one for third time. Ho hum.

By Lloyd Garrison
Connecticut Magazine has ranked Norfolk the best small town in the state for the third time in a row. From a sampling of reaction from around town, it doesn’t much matter.
“It is certainly a nice accolade,” says First Selectman Sue Dyer. “But we’ve never gotten a plaque or anything.”
Neither Speckled Hen Pub owner David Davis or Corner Store manager Mary Bazzano have noticed any increase in the number of customers showing up this time of year. “Some people have come in and commented on it,” says Davis, “but I don’t know of anyone who came here just because we are number one.”
“It’s great,” says Bazzano. “It’s not at all surprising. But it has had no affect on our bottom line.”
Real Estate appears to be the only business to have benefited from the poll results, but just barely so.
“We have photocopies of the article that we can hand out,” says David Taylor of Elyse Harney Real Estate, “but has it generated a phone call from a potential customer? Not yet.”
“A lot of our clients don’t get Connecticut Magazine because they are second home buyers from New York,” says Betsy Little of Betsy Little Real Estate. But I put the results up on our Web site. People are aware of it. I think clients notice, definitely.”
This is the seventh time Connecticut Magazine has published its small town rankings, which are announced in the March issue every other year. Norfolk has seemingly clawed its way up from 24 in 1999 to 13 in 2001 to first place in 2003 and again in 2005.
Patricia Grandjean, one of the authors of the article explaining the rankings, attributes much of Norfolk’s success “to the extraordinary amount of money donated annually to support the library.” She also cites the presence of the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival as a big plus.
According to the article, the “rankings of Connecticut’s smallest towns compare the quality of public schools, the state of the local economy, the cost of living, the crime rate and local leisure and cultural resources.”
Among the top ten towns with populations below 3,500, Norfolk was second only to Lyme in SAT scores and voter turnout, and buried all competition with an average $207 per capita contribution to the library. Sharon, the second place finisher in this category posted a per capita contribution of $167.
Three other towns bordering Norfolk made the top then: Goshen (6), Colebrook (7) and Canaan (10). Colebrook’s high ranking was notable for the fact that it has no library and therefore scored zero in this category. Cornwall, which ranked 13, would have placed in the top ten but for a relatively high crime rate that averaged one incident every two weeks.
The magazine concedes that its statistical ranking system is far from ideal. “Of course,” it states, “there are lots of reasons for loving a place, or not loving it, that go beyond test scores or how much money gets spent on the public library. Things like community spirit, cultural diversity, a good local bakery and the reliability of cell-phone reception are difficult to quantify.”
Were they quantifiable, Norfolk would score at the top only in community spirit.

Top ten small towns: 1) Norfolk, 2) Bridgewater, 3)Lyme, 4) Sharon, 5) Andover, 6) Goshen, 7) Colebrook, 8) Bethlehem, 9) Kent, 10) Canaan.