Funds raised under CPA have often been used to leverage borrowing to acquire open space, promote historic preservation, or create affordable housing. For example, a community that raises $100,000 in Community Preservation Act funds annually might be able to leverage $2,000,000 in borrowing.
The Rappaport Institute study, which was written by Robin Sherman and David Luberoff, found that the Community Preservation Act is working to redistribute funds across geographic and socioeconomic lines. Funds are going from poorer communities, which generally have not approved use of CPA, to wealthier communities, which have. Funds are also going into Cape Cod and Middlesex County from the rest of the state. The study also questioned whether funds have been used to any significant degree to create affordable housing. They cite what they say is a relative lack of transparency is tracking the use of funds under CPA.
The study makes policy recommendations, including allowing communities to adopt CPA (and receive matching funds) without imposing a property tax surcharge, restricting disbursement from the CPA Trust Fund to the county in which funds were collected, capping the amount of matching funds that any single community could receive, requiring a percentage of CPA funds to be used for affordable housing, and requiring communities that have approved CPA to report revenues and expenditures in a more consistent fashion.
Some of the recommendations are reasonable. Clearer reporting, particularly of expenditures, would benefit all stakeholders – the state, local governments, and local citizens. Doing more to encourage the creation of affordable housing makes sense, though this observer would be reluctant to support a “one size fits all” percentage.
Other recommendations, such as allowing communities to receive matching funds without imposing a property tax surcharge, go against the major public policy purpose of CPA, which is to encourage local action on open space, historic preservation, and affordable housing. Restricting matching funds to the county in which they are collected will do nothing to encourage greater use of CPA – and would only deny funds to those communities that have made a commitment to it.
What needs to happen across the state is for more local leaders to study and promote CPA. Only a few communities in my part of the state – western Worcester County – have even considered CPA. (Sturbridge seems to be the only community in the area that has approved CPA.) As my part of the state continues to grow, communities in the area will need to look hard at CPA – and give consideration to approving it. Growth is coming and CPA appears to be a useful tool in managing it. It would be regrettable if it were changed significantly before communities, such as my own West Brookfield, were able to seriously consider it.
CPA is “dessert”. No city or town suffering from sub-par municipal services is going to vote in the CPA before fixing other critical services. The state is rewarding the rich for being able to afford to spend extra money. Those towns have the extra money because their exclusivity screens out most problems common to poorer towns (crime, bad students in the schools, absentee landlords, etc.)
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I think that it is a little perverse that the state is paying towns to buy up private land so that isn’t developed. That doesn’t drive down demand — it increases it, as those towns simply become more exclusive. Exclusivity in those towns is actually fueling the increased demand in those towns.
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How about going another route — increase demand in urban areas to take off the pressure to overdevelop suburban areas? Everyone wants to move into small towns because the schools and the quality of life are very good, and those two things often stink in urban areas. So how about properly funding things like policing, drug treatment, smaller class sizes, etc., in urban areas, give more than just enough for those areas to limp along, enough to actually make them attractive to the middle class again?
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Demand for far-flung suburbs has only increased as demand for inner-core urban areas has fallen. Anyone else see the link?
You say that “demand for far-flung suburbs has only increased as demand for inner-core urban areas has fallen.”
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Sitting here in West Brookfield, it is precisely because I am optimistic about the long-term prospects for your community of Springfield that I look with interest at the Community Preservation Act for mine. I believe that Springfield can and will become prosperous in coming years – and that this will spur growth everywhere in Massachusetts between Pittsfield and Worcester.
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Communities like mine need to look at CPA if we are to retain anything like the rural character that they now enjoy as well as reasonably affordable housing stock. While I am a relative newcomer to my town, I don’t want residential real estate prices to rise to the point that long-time residents will not be able to afford to live here. Implementing the Community Preservation Act – with some emphasis on affordable housng stock – is one way that central and western Massachusetts communities will remain affordable.
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I do think that Sherman and Luberoff make a good point when they say that affordable housing needs to be emphasized more in CPA. Otherwise, you are exactly right that continual purchases of open space will tend to drive the price of real estate – sometimes in already exclusive communities – even higher.
energy efficiency projects.
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In theory, if a project is energy efficient, it’s worth doing without help, even if it entails borrowing. In reality, there’s only so many projects a town can take on at one time, and there’s only so much borrowing they’re prepared to do, even if the savings exceed the bond payments.
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Adding energy savings projects to the CPA would allow towns to get state matching to lower their operations costs. By lowering their operations costs, they may be able to ease the property tax burden a smidge [or offset some of the remaining energy bill, growing at something like 10% a year], and are also doing the environmentally and socially responsible thing.
The controversial Rappaport-sponsored study of CPA is over three years old. The response to the study seemed to be mostly against its conclusions. David’s posting from July 2007 is an example.
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p>Since then, the state’s economy, like the nation’s, has gone through a major down turn. The divide between incomes in the Boston area and the gateway cities like Fall River, Brockton, Lowell, Springfield, Pittsfield, Fitchburg, etc. has grown wider. At this point the reason for home foreclosure is less sub-prime mortgages and more longterm unemployment, which is more common in rural areas and the gateway cities.
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p>The CPA is funded by real estate transaction fees, and those fees come into play in the foreclosure process, though I assume the person foreclosed on is not charged them.
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p>The question is: Can we still refute the claim that the less wealthy are subsidizing the wealthy through CPA?
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p>The proposed legislation to Sustain the CPA is knocking around Beacon Hill. Is it the right thing to do in the present economy?
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