Prospect, Connecticut

Connecticut

Prospect calls itself the best small town in Connecticut because a magazine once ranked it the worst.

historicalcultureengineering

The slogan is painted on the town trucks. The Best Small Town in Connecticut. It started as an insult. In the early nineteen nineties, Connecticut Magazine ranked the small towns of the state by schools, economy, cost of living, crime and cultural resources. Prospect finished last. Dead last, out of the whole state. The town's long-serving mayor, Robert Chatfield, did not write a letter to the editor. He pulled the magazine off the shelves of the town library. Then he declared Prospect the best small town in Connecticut, and ordered the phrase put on town vehicles and bumper stickers. It is still on the town website. Whatever the magazine measured, the town has grown anyway. Nearly nine in ten houses here went up after nineteen fifty, and ninety percent of them hold a single family.

This is the first of 3 parts. The rest runs about 3 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
In response to this, the town's long-time mayor Robert Chatfield removed the magazine from the library, and declared Prospect "The Best Small Town in Connecticut," and ordered it placed on town vehicles and bumper stickers.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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