The U.S. States Census Bureau released Connecticut numbers this week that shows the state’s population has been declining over the year.
ith more than 3.5 million people in the state, basically every city in the state lost population over the last year. One city in New Haven County and and three in Fairfield County were the exception in the list.
The study confirms that Connecticut is loosing population and has lost about 20,000 residents over the last three years. From 2015 to 2016, the state lost over 8,000 residents.
Even with its vibrant downtown, New Haven failed to show any population growth and dropped slightly below 130,000 residents for the first time since 2010.
New Haven Mayor Toni Harp said: “I am sure by the time they do the real census, when the real count is taken that we’ll be well over 130,000.”
The officials of the New Haven are not worried about the short-term estimates, as their eyes are fixed for the long term plans for downtown and surroundings neighborhoods for growth.
“We have on tap over next two years 2,000 market level apartments and we have the new colleges at Yale,” Harp said.
The only city that is growing in New Haven County is Milford. It has a population just over 52,000 and added more than 400 people last year.
Milford Mayor Ben Blake said: “Really we are going through this economic renaissance where over the last three years we’ve had a 26% increase of new business starts.”
Those new business helped in contribution to $100 million in new construction last year. The growth in businesses actually helped to cut taxes over the last two year, Mayor Blake said.
“It is allowing us to expand our grand list,” Blake said. “And when our tax base swells, we’re able to keep taxes down.”
The official census numbers are released once in every ten years, but the bureau configures population estimates once in a year based on a number of factors. Stamford, Danbury and Norwalk, were the other large cities in Connecticut that added population.
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