Back to Article Index | Next column
Volume 115, Number 97 - Tuesday, January 19, 1999
Buying open space benefits us all
by John Friedlander
Here's a contrast I don't get. Where I lived on the west coast -- a big, wide-open, see for miles, drive for hours kind of place -- the topic of urban growth planning, with the goal of making the best possible use of limited land, is front and center. Conscious, pro-active growth planning is every day bar-stool and coffee-house conversation.
Here, where there are roughly 23 times as many people per square mile and 1/20th the square miles, growth planning is a "who cares?" topic. New subdivisions and condo piles plop themselves down everywhere, traffic multiplies, roads widen and patience shrinks, and nobody talks about dwindling elbow room.
So when crazy things get written about open space, I wonder what planet some folks live on.
Laurence D. Cohen wrote a very hare-brained column on open space acquisition a couple of weeks ago in the Hartford Courant. It bears discussion here because Middletown has some open space left, and we ought to buy a little bit of it.
In case you're not familiar with this issue, the idea behind open space acquisition is for the city to use city, state or federal funds to buy as-yet undeveloped land at fair-market values, thus preventing it from being converted to residential, business or industrial use. We're not talking about a lot of land. There generally isn't enough money available to buy more than a few acres a year.
You might wonder why the city would buy land to leave it undeveloped. Doesn't that eliminate potential tax revenue? Doesn't that waste taxpayer's money? You might think, as Cohen seems to, that this is an example of government favoring the wealthy by preserving good views from high-priced real estate, or wasting money to save spotted horned salamander owls or the last known stand of strawberry thrush goswort.
You'd be wrong.
There are a lot of reasons for the city to buy land and leave it undeveloped. A letter I saw in the Courant in response to Cohen's column made the environmental argument -- that a balanced ecosystem cannot survive if every available acre is covered by roads or buildings. This is a valid argument, which I'm going to ignore for now, because there's another argument for open space acquisition that is less likely to generate disagreement: that taking land off the "available" list will save us all money.
Here's how it works. Most, if not all of the land that could be acquired as open space would otherwise be used for single-family homes, or other relatively low-density residential purposes. This means the families who live there would require utility lines, sewer hookups and maintenance, road plowing, fire fighting, police patrols, garbage pickup, schools for their kids, and all the other things we take for granted that our taxes pay for. The biggest ticket item here is schools, at about 40% of the budget.
In comparison, if that land were used by business, the cost to the city would be much lower, since schools aren't a service businesses create additional demand for. With our present balance of residences and businesses, Middletown generates a very slight net gain from taxes collected from homeowners and businesses to pay for services rendered. But as our residential population increases -- thus increasing our need for expensive school services -- that balance shifts toward a net loss. This creates pressure to raise taxes.
Why not target current available land for business development? Because most businesses want central locations, not the remote areas usually considered for open space acquisition.
What happens when we leave the land undeveloped? What's the equation then? It generates a small amount of tax revenue, and almost no costs.
So from an economic point of view, leaving land open can actually help us prevent rapid tax increases made necessary by runaway residential expansion.
But, you might say, if the budget for open space acquisition is so small, and the amount of space for residential construction is relatively large, how can the symbolic gesture of acquiring a few acres a year make any real difference? Aren't there other reasons to take land off the available list?
Sure there are -- lots of reasons, ranging from economic to quality of life to environmental to aesthetic. Some of these reasons have immediate benefits, others take longer to realize. I don't have anywhere near enough space here to explain them all. But very smart professionals from all corners of our community join together in agreeing that open space acquisition is a very smart thing to do to ensure the long-range health and economic well-being of Middletown far into the future. Anyone with any knowledge of the topic shook their head sadly when they read Cohen's shallow and ill-informed remarks.
The fact is, Middletown has had a strategic plan for open space acquisition for many years, and that plan is up for revision and re-budgeting this year. It is critical that this plan be taken seriously and funded well because this is an issue that must be dealt with proactively. It's virtually impossible to solve the problems open space acquisition prevents after they've occurred.
I'll revisit this topic from time to time, as the opportunity arises. Because with as little space as we've got to work with, it's vital that we use it all wisely.
Back to Article Index | Next column
Though I wrote this column, the Middletown Press owns it now, including the copyright associated with it. The column appears here by permission, and no other publication is allowed without express permission from the publisher.