Wringing expenses out of Newtown’s annual budget is proving harder to do than to talk about. Earlier this month, the finance committee of the Legislative Council concluded that the planned expenditure of millions of dollars could either be delayed or removed entirely from the town’s Capital Improvement Plan (CIP). The panel targeted financing for park projects, the senior/recreation center, and moving some school and police capital projects into the operating budget to save borrowing costs. Yet most of the millions of the committee’s proposed CIP cuts would come from trimming by half the town’s five-year program of earmarking $2 million per year for the acquisition of open space.

The CIP, however, is a conceptual planning document that helps budgetmakers orient themselves as they go about crafting a budget of actual expenditures. Consequently, the full Legislative Council saw no point in amending the capital plan and decided not to make the changes in the document proposed by its finance committee. That does not mean, however, that some of the recommendations by the committee will not resurface in budget deliberations in the coming weeks and months.

So we feel compelled here to once again note that not every budget cut saves the town money, especially when we are talking about expenditures for open space acquisition. Over the past decade, municipal planners throughout the state and nation have come to realize that investing in open space secures more than a town’s scenery. It also secures a more stable tax rate.

Since the early 1980s, 13,000-plus acres of land — more than a third of Newtown’s total land area — have been converted from open space to residential development. In study after study, it has been demonstrated that municipal services provided to residential development exceeds tax revenues from those properties by anywhere from 25 to 50 percent. That net loss to a town accumulates for every residential property year in, year out, creating alarming spikes in the property tax rate. Conversely, the savings accrued from preserving open space that would normally would be developed into neighborhoods accumulates in perpetuity.

Unlike other capital expenditures, open space does not depreciate in value. With minimal oversight and maintenance, it does not wear out, break, or require replacement in due time. Open space also enhances the value of surrounding properties, and protects environmental resources and water quality, preserving a town’s quality of life for future generations. Outside of the education of a child, few things we invest our tax dollars in yield the kind of dividends that open space pays fiscal year after fiscal year.

So when the conversation comes around to open space acquisition, as we are sure it will in the coming budget season, let’s not talk about what these expenditures will costs us. Let’s remember what they will earn us.