The comprehensive update of a local Roads Ordinance that will give the town much more flexibility and lays out specific guidelines on the development, maintenance, and improvements of town roads is among three ordinances heading for brief public hearings before the Legislative Council's September 6 regular meeting.

Hearings will also be held on a Farm Building Tax Exemption Ordinance, as well as an ordinance authorizing a property tax abatement to qualifying members of the Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps (NVAC), Newtown Underwater Search And Rescue (NUSAR), and members of the town's five separate volunteer fire companies.

After a thorough vetting and deliberation in the council's ordinance committee, its chairman, Ryan Knapp, brought three recommendations forward to the full council on August 16. During that meeting, the group voted unanimously to send the farm building ordinance to hearing.

Prior to the meeting, Mr Knapp explained to The Newtown Bee that the creation of such an ordinance was suggested by the operators of one of the remaining working farms in Newtown, and that the community can authorize certain outbuilding property tax exemptions by state law.

"The state allows municipalities to exempt certain outbuildings like barns and sheds up to a given point, up to $100,000 per building," Mr Knapp said. "But the benefit can only be conveyed to a working farm as identified by statute. And according to a list from the assessor's office, there are about a hundred qualifying outbuildings in Newtown, and those buildings only make up a total of $1.5 million on our grand list."

The grand list is an inventory of every taxable piece of property in the municipality. The public hearings will begin at 7 pm on September 6 in the Municipal Center Council Chambers.

"While a few of these buildings represent high-end barns, valued in the six-figure range, most are smaller barns, sheds, and other outbuildings that aren't taxed very much because nobody is living in them," Mr Knapp said. "By implementing this, we'd need to set the maximum benefit by resolution."

Upon deliberation by the full council on August 16, that cap in the ordinance language was set at $50,000 per taxable parcel, which at maximum provides about a $1,690 reduction. If enacted as proposed, only four farm parcels in town would have buildings valued higher than the ordinance cap.

Mr Knapp and several of his colleagues at the meeting recognized the town was facing a revenue shortfall, so it is challenging to bring forward any ordinance that would exempt revenue. According to the council meeting transcript, in agreeing to support the farm building ordinance, Councilman George Ferguson said he would approve the language being put "on the books," but would not support its implementation.

Volunteers' Abatement

Mr Knapp said his committee was also asked to review a property tax benefit that was extended to certain municipal emergency service volunteers that would provide a maximum reduction in their residential property taxes of $1,000 after seven years of qualified service, with a graduating benefit accruing as program applicants tenure increased from their initial year of service.

"It's a given that qualified applicants adhere to certain criteria, respond to a certain number of calls, that they remain in good standing, and their commanding officer attests to that on an annual list provided to the tax collector," Mr Knapp said. "This came to us with a request to consider increasing the benefit, and we gave it a thorough vetting. There were less people receiving this benefit than I expected, and it's not a significant cost to taxpayers, especially in consideration to the level of service these volunteers provide."

He said, however, that state statute limits the maximum property tax abatement or exemption to an annual maximum of $1,000 per qualified volunteer.

"I think if we were allowed to give them more we would have strongly considered it," Mr Knapp said.

Although the maximum benefit is defined, and Newtown was administering the benefit to its maximum scope, Mr Knapp said former language in the ordinance was problematic, in that the words "exemption" and "abatement" were used interchangeably, which was inappropriate and could have the potential of causing problems.

"An abatement is a reduction relative to your tax bill, but an exemption is a reduction of your assessed property value," he said, adding that an abatement is a fixed amount that can be carried over year-to-year, while an exemption amount can fluctuate based on annual changes to the town's mill rate. A mill equals one dollar for every $1,000 in taxable property.

"The intent of the ordinance is a $1,000 abatement, so the change to this ordinance makes that language uniform throughout," he said.

Road Ordinance Overhaul

In tackling the daunting task of modifying and modernizing the town's road ordinance, Mr Knapp said that his committee actually took three separate road-related measures and combined them into one.

"We had a road ordinance, a scenic roads ordinance, and a sidewalk ordinance on the books," he said. "And they all had overlap, so we decided to put them all under the same single and substantial ordinance. This is not a one-pager, because it's not just providing language for the town to follow, but for any contractors or developers that may be engaged in installing, repairing, or maintaining roads in town. This outlines all the standards they have to meet when developing a road, so it can be accepted. At the same time it protects the town and taxpayers from any liability for a road that does not meet ordinance standards."

The ordinance also creates a system by which the town can accept certain roads that are not currently a part of the official town roads system, he said.

"Newtown has a lot of non-town-owned roads," Mr Knapp said. "These are roads that may be owned by certain neighbors, by a private community, or even an individual. And we found that the real challenge was that some of these roads will never be conforming. So we created a mechanism, on a case-by-case basis, for the town to evaluate and accept certain non-town-owned roads into the town system, even though they can never meet the minimum town design standards."

The other major point in the roads ordinance compels the town to create a policy that will sustain from administration to administration. Mr Knapp said that his committee determined that policy should consider the value of paving certain currently unpaved roads.

"We're told that the cost of annual maintenance of some unpaved roads exceeds the cost of going in and paving them," Mr Knapp said.

He said that up until now, the town had an allowance for plowing and maintaining non-town-owned roads to ensure the safe access of emergency vehicles to all town residences.

"These are public thoroughfares, but not owned by the town. So we based our new language on a Glastonbury ordinance that gives the town a right, at its discretion, to do surface patching, incidental sanding, maintenance, and the installation of street signs," he said. "We don't want to compel the town to do work it may not want to do, and we don't want to compel the town to use eminent domain to take action to make these 100-plus miles of roads safe and passable."

A full draft of the ordinanceThe Newtown Bee, on pages B-10 and B-11. appears in this seek's edition of 

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