Cape faces generation gap -CCOnline
Published on Sunday, December 07, 2008
As reported on Cape Cod Online - Full Story here
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By Patrick Cassidy
Truro Police Chief John Thomas has little difficulty hiring new officers. Keeping them is a different story.
It comes down to the math: According to Thomas, the starting salary for a Truro police officer is under $48,000 a year. And Zillow.com, a real estate market research group, lists the median value of a home in Truro at $614,000. The monthly mortgage payment for such a home, based on a 30-year loan and 30 percent down payment, would be $2,500, about equal to a rookie police officer's take-home pay.
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"If I didn't already have a house, I wouldn't be able to move here," the 53-year-old chief said during a recent interview.
Even if both members of a young couple work full-time jobs, the numbers usually don't add up to home ownership, Thomas said.
The problem is not unique to Truro.
Other Cape police and fire departments, the health care industry and schools report a similar problem: It's hard to hire and retain young employees.
As a result, the age pendulum on the Cape is swinging wildly to one side. There are twice the number of people on the Cape 65 and older as there are residents between the ages 25 and 34.
And while the relentless graying of the Cape may not be news to many, the potential effects of the lopsided equation on the region — dropping property values, deterioration of municipal services, a drag on the overall economy — have recently been given the kind of attention usually reserved for hot-button issues like wind farms and casinos.
Business groups are gathering data, and towns are seriously contemplating regional efforts to keep the cost of living on the peninsula realistic.
This fall, community leaders across the Cape have formed a new group called Cape Cod Focus to zero in on the problem.
"We don't pretend to have lots of answers and solutions," said Stephen Abbott, former chief executive officer of Cape Cod Healthcare and co-chairman of the group. "The sheer documenting of it, I think, would be a real contribution."
The Capewide discussion intensified after Peter Francese, demographic forecaster for the New England Economic Partnership, last year warned at a forum sponsored by the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce of the serious impact on the Cape's economy, social structure and future if the demographic trends continue.
"He did a nice job, to my mind, of drawing a picture of where we could go if we don't address this," said Gary Sheehan, co-founder of the Cape Cod Young Professionals and another member of Cape Cod Focus.
That fast-approaching future is the reason the difficult conversation about what should be done must start now, Francese said in an interview.
"It's almost like the sun going down or the moon rising," Francese said. "If you focus on it, you can't see the movement, but it moves."
In order to have a healthy demographic mix, Francese said, the number of residents between 25 and 34 years old should roughly equal the number of residents 65 and older. And, in 1950, that was the case on the Cape.
Today, however, there are twice the number of members in the older group who live in Barnstable County than there are in the younger bracket, according to U.S. Census data.
The county has one of the highest ratios of deaths to births in the country, Francese said.
"It's not that women in Barnstable County for some reason don't want to have any kids," he said. "It's that the young women aren't there."
But the retirees are — and have been since the middle of the century, when the business community and local planners sought to entice them here.
Under the direction of Norman Cook, executive secretary of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce for 23 years until 1970, when he became the peninsula's lead economic planner, businesses responded to the need for more jobs by naturally looking to what resources the Cape had to offer: land and a lifestyle.
The chamber marketed the area in pamphlets and other advertisements as a "Wonderful Way of Life" overflowing with the quaint charm of seaside communities and the verdant green of world-class golf courses. Cook's Cape Cod was the perfect petri dish to grow retirees and second-home owners who would eventually retire to the Cape. And it worked, big time.
Between 1950 and 1980, the Cape's population jumped from less than 50,000 to almost 150,000.
But the growth was not proportional across the generations. The percentage of Cape residents 65 and older climbed steadily during that period. At the same time, the percentage of people on the Cape between the ages of 25 and 34 has declined.
And as baby boomers reach retirement age in the next two decades, the already skewed demographic makeup is expected to become even more out of balance.
The specific reasons for the aging of the Cape's population are as varied as the individual decisions that bring people to the peninsula and draw them away. For example, many young families left the Cape when the Air Force departed Otis in the 1970s, according to Marilyn Fifield, who worked with Cook when he was head of the Cape Cod Planning and Economic Development Commission in 1970.
But the cost of housing and raising a young family here is high on the list of factors that affect who stays and goes, Francese said.
It's a phenomenon Cook could not have anticipated, although he, and others who followed in his footsteps, warned of the dangers of overdevelopment and of the need for a broader economic base for the Cape. Creating jobs, Fifield said, was important to Cook.
It's still important, according to Francese.
"A decline in the work force really presages a decline in economic activity," Francese said. "Workers are the backbone of any regional economy."
With the conversation spurred by Francese's comments, there is a renewed effort to change directions, spearheaded by the same chamber that Norman Cook once led. Regionalization of services and increased housing that young families can afford — chief among Francese's recommendations to lower the cost of living on the Cape — are the new mantras.
As for where the region heads from here, that is still being decided and — Cook might be the first to warn — is difficult to foresee.