Age Friendly Livable Community Initiative

How it started:

Pat Llodra, then First Selectman, enrolled Newtown in the AARP Network of Age Friendly Livable Communities in 2017. It is a mechanism to share ideas, plans, solutions and experiences. It is not a designation that the community has met certain criteria and there are no awards or levels of achievement. It does provide a rich set of resources and connections. (Click Here for more on the AARP Age-Friendly Livable Community Network)

FONS was asked to staff the activities related to Newtown’s participation in the network. In April 2018 a Livable Community workshop, (link https://www.newtownbee.com/09072018/selectmen-updated-on-age-friendly-livable-community-efforts/?q=FONS ) involved over 80 community leaders in identifying opportunities for making Newtown a more livable community for all ages. Reporting out the findings of the workshop identified over 130 things to do. (Link to Report) In the following months work sessions were held to identify and plan initiatives for the first areas to work on. These include the highest priorities with feasible interventions and some “low hanging fruit” (Link to Priority Table). The Livable Community efforts were presented to the Board of Selectmen in September 2018.