For More And More Homeowners, Life In Newtown

Comes At The Cost Of A Long Commute

By John Voket

So, you think you have a tough commute?

If you want to feel a little better about it you should chat with Newtown resident Steve zVon. And you probably don’t want to hear about the drive First Selectman Herbert Rosenthal makes to his office each day.

Mr zVon and Mr Rosenthal represent two polar opposites when it comes to making the trip to work. While the First Selectman travels just a few hundred yards from his home on Main Street to his desk at Edmond Town Hall, Mr zVon spends about six hours commuting to work…every day…and that’s on a good day!

The number of Newtown commuters regularly traveling to New York State and beyond each workday has more than doubled since 1980, according to the most recent statistics provided by the Housatonic Valley Council of Elected Officials. The organization tracks commuting patterns in and out of the communities in its jurisdiction, among many demographic trends that impact the region.

The organization’s executive director, Jonathan Chew, believes the most recent statistics posted on Newtown’s commuting patterns reinforces the idea that urban sprawl is a rapidly growing factor influencing many local residents who choose to commute. And that commuting comes at a cost in stress levels, in the amount of pollution caused, and fuel consumed.

“The statistics prove there is a diffusion between job locations and home towns that isn’t necessarily healthy,” Mr Chew said. “When you look at the number of commuters from Newtown traveling significant distances in their cars to get to work, you can see it affecting personal health, the environment. and the amount of quality time commuters spend with their families versus time spent getting to and from work in their cars.”

Despite his assertion, other authorities and die-hard commuters themselves say they tend to endure a difficult commute because it allows them to maintain a home and quality lifestyle here in Newtown. According to Jackie zVon, her husband’s daily commute to Jersey City, N.J., pales in comparison to his former trek back and forth to Puerto Rico.

“He came home for three days, once a month,” Ms zVon said. “But these days I think it’s difficult for any family to live the Ozzie and Harriet life.” She said his next job forced him to maintain a weekday residence in New Jersey.

“He only came home on weekends for about two years,” she recalls.

“This economy means that you do what you have to in order to survive in your field,” she said of her husband, a commercial construction specialist who is currently working on a municipal school building project. “If that means spending time away from your family, that’s what you must do. As hard as that is — and believe me, it’s hard — there’s no other choice.”

But Ms zVon says the family has adapted to her husband’s commuting patterns, and has been recently rewarded with a fairly stable period where her husband can be home most evenings to enjoy the simple pleasures like little league baseball games with their son, Stephen.

“He enjoys his dad being home at night,” she said. “When Steve lived in New Jersey or especially Puerto Rico, he couldn’t be here in person. Now, they practice baseball every night. My husband makes every effort to be here for Stephen’s games.”

One might classify the zVon family as another in a growing commuter culture. They made the situation work to the best of everyone’s ability — sometimes it was just a matter of improvising.

“When he lived away from home during the week, Steve would call several times during each game on his cell phone for updates. Now, he can be there for most of them,” she said.

When 20 Minutes Equals $250,000

Borough resident Bruce Walczak said the zVons’ experience is somewhat extreme, but it is a similar challenge addressed by the hundreds of employees and human resource representatives he works with as the owner of Relocation Consultants, Inc. Much of Mr Walczak’s responsibility revolves around balancing the needs of large employers like the Pepsico (the Pepsi Cola company) and the Cendant Corporation, with the desires of relocating managers and executives.

According to Mr Walczak, most of these white collar execs want to be close enough to have a realistic commute, but far enough away to take advantage of suburban benefits.

“The zVon family is typical, in that they endure a longer commute to afford themselves a certain lifestyle, top-rated education systems, and so-forth,” he said. “Most of the commuters in Newtown have families here. Most often it’s about one’s personal economy. People keep going further and further away from their jobs to find that point where the price of a home meets the value they hope to get from it.”

He pointed out the median list price of a home in Newtown today ($609,900), compared to a similar home in Ridgefield ($879,500) which is only about 20 minutes closer to the Westchester and Manhattan job markets.

“If your willing to invest another 20 to 40 minutes a day, you might save a quarter-million dollars by moving to Newtown,” observed Mr Walczak. “I recently helped an executive who was looking at a home in Larchmont [NY], a 15-minute commute to his new job in Valhalla. The house there was $1.8 million. That same house in Newtown is only $1.2 million, but is it worth the average one- to two-hour daily commute?”

In Mr Walczak’s business, the information highway may be as important as the tarmac his customers traverse to get to and from their jobs. His company uses numerous web-based services to stay on top of the most current demographic information so he can advise relocating families on home prices, school systems, town services, recreational opportunities, and the all important issue: how long will it take me to get there from here?

“We subscribe to a service where we can get up-to-the-minute information on school districts, and make side-by-side comparisons to schools in up to six different communities,” Mr Walczak said. “We utilize another service that factors census data with up to 200 other data sources to provide current and even future trends in communities across the region.”

Using a computer program that allows for the input of variables as specific as the average miles per hour to travel on certain segments of roadways, Mr Walczak creates maps for his clients detailing the communities that are within certain distances of their workplace.

He said that today, transferees tend to push their commute outward based on the limit of their purchasing power. And in some cases the ability to make a minor adjustment makes all the difference to an employer who is paying the freight to relocate.

“One client was being offered a significant pay incentive to relocate within 50 minutes of his job site in Westchester County,” Mr Walczak recalled. “So from where he started in Cheshire, he began adjusting his relocation search inward first to Southbury, which was still just outside the range, to here in Newtown.”

Where Newtown Works

When examining other commuting trends from the HVCEO data, some interesting patterns emerge.

In 2000, the number of Newtown residents commuting to Manhattan had more than tripled since 1980, while those commuting to one of the closer city centers, Waterbury, has more than doubled.

Strangely enough, the stats show trends to the closest city, Danbury, has cycled from 1,795 in 1980, up to a high of 2,070 in 1990, and dropping nearly 20 percent to a low of 1,606 in the Year 2000. The next closest city center, Bridgeport, has been relatively flat with 508 commuters in 1980 dropping only slightly to 450 in 2000.

To the other extreme, Shelton has become a regional commuting magnet, possibly explaining the rapidly increasing traffic flow southward on Route 34, and the many alternate back roads short cuts to and through Monroe. In 1990, only 16 individuals reported making the trip, but by 2000 drivers were sharing the road with 302 other Newtown commuters bound for Shelton.

Those like Mr Rosenthal, who are fortunate enough to work and live in Newtown, are becoming more scarce. According to Mr Chew, in 1970 almost 40 percent of residents also worked here in town. Today, that percentage has dwindled to only 24 percent.

As in most of the ten other municipalities in the region, the extent to which employers in Newtown rely upon the working residents of Newtown to serve as their labor pool has been steadily falling between 1970 and 2000. The statistical chances of a Newtown resident filling any particular job opening in Newtown were 53 percent in 1970, 48 percent in 1980, 44 percent in 1990 and down to 35 percent in 2000.

Conversely, in 2000 the major geographic sources of labor to fill jobs in Newtown were as follows: from Newtown itself (2,998 or 35 percent), from Danbury (861 or 10.1 percent), Bridgeport (385), Southbury (364), Waterbury (285), New Milford (257), Bethel (233), Naugatuck (223), and New York State (210). Workers from just these nine locations filled 68 percent of all of the jobs in Newtown in 2000.

Between 1980 and 2000 the local Newtown economy became less dependent upon town residents to fill jobs. At the same time the local economy became more dependent upon labor supply from Danbury.

With all this commuting going on, it’s a wonder anyone has time to get away from it all. But Mr Walczak believes he has found the ideal solution, with both his primary and vacation homes located right here.

“We decided some time ago that we didn’t really want to spend a lot of time traveling and fighting the traffic when it was time for vacation, so we bought a cottage right here on Lake Zoar,” said Mr Walczak. “For me it’s only about eight minutes until I’m sipping a glass of wine on my porch, looking out over the water — and it has all the natural seclusion of a place in Central Maine.”

And what about the zVon family? When it’s time for their family getaway, they head to where you couldn’t drive more than a mile or two in any one direction even if you wanted to.

“Usually we go to Block Island for two weeks, with nothing to do and nowhere to go,” said Ms zVon. “It’s just what we all need: the beach, fishing, bike rides, and barbecues.”