Open Space And The Money

We Do Not Spend

Tough times present everyone with tough choices, and unfortunately not every tough choice is a smart choice. When there is not enough money to go around, where does one make the extra sacrifice for the sake of a better future? We hear inspiring stories all the time about parents who took on second or third jobs so they could save for their children’s education. Or the spouse who sells the car and bikes to work to pay for a spouse’s essential medicine. The hope and realization in these cases is that some things are definitely worth the short-term sacrifice given the overriding value of the long-term benefits. In town budgets, however, there are so many things of importance to consider — education, social services, emergency services — sometimes we end up making tough choices that in the long run will harm the very things we are trying to accommodate. Such is Newtown’s choice on open space preservation.

In 2005, Newtown established a fund for the acquisition of open space, allocating $10 million over a five-year span as a means to balance residential and commercial development with the preservation of existing natural resources that have played such a large part in making the town so attractive to development in the first place. In addition, the town sought to improve its processes for identifying, reviewing, underwriting, and formally acquiring properties. In 2002, about 1,350 acres of open space had been preserved in Newtown. Today, open space holdings have increased to 1,850 acres.

Recent battles over expenditures and property taxes, however, have focused local budgetmakers on savings, and one easy target was open space funding. Consequently, the 2010 version of the capital improvement plan cut back open space funding by 20 percent, or $2 million, for the next five years — a decision that has the potential to cost the town many millions more.

In 2008, Newtown’s Deputy Land Use Director Rob Sibley analyzed the fiscal benefits of just one 29-acre parcel of open space off Sugar Hill Road and Shepard Hill Road as part of a fiscal impact report on open space bonding. The land was purchased in 2006 for $1.2 million, removing from the real estate market nine possible buildable lots. The nine homes that will never be built on that land would have had an estimated value of $492,250 each, yielding tax revenue of $7,994 per home, or $71,948 for the entire subdivision. That is lost revenue for the town. But let us make the reasonable estimate that 1.5 children would have inhabited each home (while rejecting the concept of half a child as unreasonable), or 14 children for the subdivision. Those children would have cost the town $11,656 per pupil in education costs, or $163,184 for the subdivision. Additionally, we must count the roughly $1,500 per person cost of noneducational municipal services for the 3.5 persons per home (32 persons overall in the subdivision), totaling $48,000. So the $71,948 in tax revenues from development on this land would fall far short of the $211,184 it would cost the town in municipal and school services.

That one 29-acre parcel of open space represents an annual savings of nearly $140,000 for the taxpayers, not just for the 8.5 years (ending in 2014) that it will take to recoup the cost of the land, but forever. This single, relatively small parcel of open space represents about $1 million in savings for Newtown taxpayers every seven years or so, generation after generation, into the distant future. That’s the return on a $1.2 million investment made by the people of Newtown in 2006. We need to have more investments like that in our portfolio.

While sometimes it is hard to count our financial wealth in terms of money we don’t spend, it is quite easy to tally up the dividends of open space in the quality-of-life ledger. Newtown’s natural vistas and open spaces are closely tied to the cherished “character” of Newtown, which has drawn and continues to draw people to it. Yes, open space enhances property values, but it also enhances our lives, giving us places to wander, play, and simply reflect on the beauty of the world.

Spending more money, not less, on open space acquisition in years when money is scarce is indeed a tough decision to make. But it is one of those smart decisions that will help this town accomplish all that it hopes to, not only in preserving our natural resources, but in our educational programs, in serving townspeople in need, and in protecting Newtown’s citizens from the hazards of an uncertain future.