The Independent - April 7, 2006
Town and village nix annex proposal
By: RICHARD ROTH

KINDERHOOK-The Town of Kinderhook and the Village of Valatie have denied Anthony Buono's request for the annexation by the village of 14.36 acres south of the Little Falls subdivision.

Mr. Buono plans to appeal the ruling.

The parcel is situated in an Agricultural/Residential zone, which requires a minimum lot size of 5 acres. But had the annexation won approval, Mr. Buono said earlier this year that he intended to apply for a change to R-1 zoning and subdivide the parcel into a maximum of 24 lots for single-family homes.

Mr. Buono, who practices law in Valatie, issued a statement Tuesday, April 4, calling the boards' action, which was taken at a joint meeting Monday, April 3, a denial of due process. And he said he will bring a legal proceeding against the village and town to compel them to complete a full review under the state Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA).

"The resolutions were illegally adopted and they fly in the face of recent and binding Court of Appeals precedent," said Mr. Buono in his statement.

A complete SEQRA review is required before a board can vote to adopt or reject annexation, according to Mr. Buono. But Town Councilman Ed Simonsen, a former chairman of the town Planning Board, said Town Attorney Edward McConville interprets the law differently, saying that Mr. McConville's interpretation "is that you cannot vote positively for annexation unless you've done a SEQRA review," said Mr. Simonsen. "The flip side is that if you vote negatively, I don't think you have to do a complete SEQRA review."
Accusing Mr. Buono of "grasping at straws," Mr. Simonsen said the boards' decision would be the same even if Mr. Buono wins his suit and the process starts over. "He's going to have to come back to the same boards, and we vote again," said Mr. Simonsen. "Does he think the result will change? It's not going to."
Mr. Buono also believes there may have been a violation of the state Open Meetings Law, because members of both boards gathered in Mr. McGivney's office before the public meeting began. But Mr. Simonsen said there was "not a quorum of either the town or the village board" present at the time. Three members from each board, the minimum needed for a quorum, participated once the meeting was called to order.

Annexing the land to the village makes sense, in Mr. Buono's view, because it would promote growth in a part of the town that already has higher density housing. "It's consistent with the town's comprehensive plan," he said earlier this year.

Town Supervisor Doug McGivney disagrees. According to the minutes of the joint meeting, Mr. McGivney quoted village Trustee Steven Berry as saying the annexation proposal "flies in the face" of both the town's comprehensive plan and the village's draft comprehensive plan, both of which emphasize the preservation of open space and agricultural land.

Mr. McGivney also said it is important to preserve the distinct boundary between the village and the rural countryside, which he said is "a positive aspect of the village."

Before the joint meeting got underway, the Village Board had issued a positive declaration of environmental impacts, meaning that Mr. Buono's proposal would have a major environmental impact. It refers to a recommendation in the draft comprehensive plan to increase minimum lot sizes within the village to one acre, double the size Mr. Buono proposes. The declaration also says Mr. Buono's proposal would have a "significant impact" on water and sewer systems.

While a financial contribution by the developer could mitigate the increased demand on the system by additional homes, says the declaration, "the long-term maintenance of the systems with piping will be an expense borne by the Village of Valatie."

And the declaration says "a large number of citizens from both [the town and village] have appeared at public hearings and expressed objections."

Mr. Buono said he intends to proceed with a legal proceeding in any case, in order to make sure that the law was applied fairly and equally. "If municipal boards can deny a project with due process because of its apparent unpopularity, they also can approve a project without due process," says his written statement.
To contact reporter Richard Roth, e-mail rroth@indenews.com.

KNGG COMMENT: If Buono looses the law suit, the Town must be sure they collect costs.

First published: Sunday, January 29, 2006

Town wants to pull annex comments
North Greenbush voted against deal but said it had no negative effect

By KATE PERRY, Staff writer, Times Union

NORTH GREENBUSH Town officials are trying to close a loophole they fear could lead to a hotly debated annexation. In December, the old Town Board voted against transferring a chunk of land from North Greenbush to Rensselaer. But in a second resolution, it ruled the annexation would have no negative impact on the town.

The new board set the wheels in motion Thursday to repeal the second resolution by opening a public comment period.

The board opposes the annexation and contends they could later get burned by the resolution stating it would hold no negative impact.

"The town basically said nothing negative would happen if we lost that property and we didn't want that reflected if it ever went to court," said Town Supervisor Mark Evers.

Residents can comment on the environmental impact of the annexation until Feb. 8.

The board will review the comments and reconsider the resolution that states the annexation would hold no negative impact.

The Rensselaer Common Council hasn't voted on the annexation. But council president Charles Hall said the council supports it because the city stands to gain tax revenue.

With North Greenbush staunchly opposed to the annexation and Rensselaer pushing for it, the two could end up in a court battle.

Some question whether the town board can repeal the old board's decision.

Mary Beth Slevin, the attorney for annexation applicants, said that it doesn't have the power to reverse the decision. She said it would have to repeal the decision against the annexation before addressing the environmental impact statement.

She also wasn't sure the board passed the resolution legally on Thursday. The meeting was a workshop and the board suspended its regular rules to vote.

But there is nothing wrong with taking action on a resolution, according Bob Freeman, executive director of the state's Committee on Open Government. "A meeting is a meeting," he said.

"Anytime a majority of a public body gathers for the purpose of conducting public business that is a meeting, and they can take action."

Kate Perry can be reached at 454-5420 or by e-mail at kperry@timesunion.com
All Times Union materials copyright 1996-2005, Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation, Albany, N.Y.

First Published November 22, 2005

Tuesday, July 19, 2005
The Pace of Growth
Posted by James Sheldon
With land use regulations under review in dozens of Hudson Valley towns, citizens and local officials find themselves grappling with one of the major shortcomings of traditional zoning codes: while the codes specify lot sizes and permitted uses for different areas of a town, they offer little guidance on planning the pace of growth.

Almost all new residential development increases property taxes for existing homeowners, as previous columns have illustrated. But a surge of new homes over a short period of time causes greater disruption to public services and costs taxpayers substantially more than gradually phasing in the same number of new homes over a longer time frame.

Asking themselves not only how much growth they want, but how soon they can handle it, municipalities in several states have adopted development “phasing” techniques to insure that population growth does not overwhelm their schools, overstretch their fire and police departments or bury their residents under huge tax increases.

Some towns have met the threat of too rapid growth by imposing a limit on the number of building permits they will approve in a given year. Others have opted to freeze subdivision approvals entirely until adequate public facilities—schools, roads, water systems, etc.-- can be financed and constructed to meet the demands of new residents.

Legal precedents support a town’s right to impose phased growth restrictions provided they are based on thorough analysis and are consistent with planning goals and zoning regulations. In a landmark 1972 case, New York State’s highest court ruled, “Where it is clear that the existing physical and financial resources of the community are inadequate to furnish the essential services and facilities which a substantial increase in population requires, there is a rational basis for ‘phased growth.’”

One successful model of phased growth is the central Massachusetts town of Amherst. A rural college community of 23,000 full-time residents, Amherst in the mid-1980s was comfortably absorbing between 100 and 150 new homes annually. But in 1986, with real estate markets booming nationwide, developers besieged Amherst planners for approval of more than 1,200 new housing lots.

“People were scared,” recalled Robert Mitchell, the former Director of Amherst’s Planning Department and now his state’s Special Assistant for Sustainable Development. “They worried about overcrowding in the schools and traffic demand… They wanted to maintain open farmland and a diverse range of housing types, the distinctive features of the town.”

With overwhelming public support, Amherst imposed an 18-month moratorium on new development and allocated $100,000 to Mitchell’s department to develop a blueprint for the town’s long-range future. The resulting regulations increased zoning densities, maintained the town’s commitment to affordable housing and initiated programs to preserve farmland. As part of its growth strategy, Amherst also capped the rate of new home building at 125 permits per year.

“More important than the number,” said Mr. Mitchell, was a point system for allocating the limited permits among developers that focused on “not just the quantity but the quality of growth.”

The Amherst system, like many others across the country, gives more points and more permits to developments that advance the town’s primary planning goals: concentrating population in and around village centers, preserving open space and making at least 10% of the housing stock affordable to working families.

Since its inception 18 years ago, Amherst’s growth plan has remained popular with townspeople and with developers, who have not filed a single court challenge to the phasing system.

“It changed the kinds of developments being proposed,” Mr. Mitchell said. “We sent a clear message to the development community of what kind of growth Amherst wanted and the incentives we were willing to offer. All proposed subdivisions now meet our growth standards as a matter of course.”

Phased growth planning can also be very valuable to smaller rural towns in the Hudson Valley, according to Nan Stolzenburg, founder of Community Planning & Environmental Associates, which consults to dozens of upstate towns including Pine Plains and Kinderhook.

“I almost always recommend” some method of regulating the pace of growth consistent with a town’s financial and physical capacity to absorb it, Ms. Stolzenburg said. “But my clients often reject it.”

New York municipalities remain generally reluctant to adopt phased development along the lines of the Amherst model. Some town officials are deterred by the up-front costs of the studies required to justify a phased growth plan—though they are insignificant compared to the potential tax savings the plan could achieve. The need to administer the plan once approved adds another layer of complexity.

But the biggest reason many New York towns resist enacting phased growth plans, Ms. Stolzenburg suggested, may have more to do with the politics of planning in general.

“There needs to be the political will on the part of town officials,” she said, to step into “the conflict between what a community wants and what large landowners with significant influence on decision-making believe they have a right to do. It all comes down to money and politics.”

The previous article is from the web site http://gallatinviews.blogspot.com/

First published: Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Annexation plan draws foes
Many oppose land near routes 4 and 43 going from North Greenbush to city of Rensselaer

By BRUCE A. SCRUTON, Staff writer The Times Union

NORTH GREENBUSH -- The show of hands carried no official weight, but it was obvious that, at Tuesday night's public hearing, there was little support for a 250-acre chunk of the town to be given over to the city of Rensselaer.

Much of the land in question lies in the hamlet of Defreestville, including the intersection of routes 4 and 43 -- one of the last undeveloped major intersections in the region.

Tuesday's hearing was part of an effort to let the city of Rensselaer annex the land, which would allow development around the intersection. Annexation is being sought by property owners who want to see the area built up. North Greenbush officials, however, oppose annexation.

At the same time, there is a movement to get the hamlet incorporated as a village, which could allow limits on development.

For the city of Rensselaer, annexation would expand the tax base, although it would add students to an already crowded school.

The town of North Greenbush doesn't like either plan. Officials there don't want to erode their tax base and they don't want to give up control over development around the intersection.

For annexation to be successful, both the city's Common Council and Town Board must approve.

The Town Board has already passed a resolution against annexation, but they must allow hearings on the topic.

Residents had lots of reasons to oppose annexation.

John Eadie, who heads the Defreestville Area Neighborhood Association, said it would amount to a sectioning off of the town. "If the fire department has to get there, it would have to drive through the city," he said. "And the same for police."

Andrew Mair took that argument one step further, saying state law prohibits creating "an island," in which a city surrounds and divides a town.

While the land is in North Greenbush, it falls within the East Greenbush school district, and children in the area would be forced to transfer into Rensselaer schools. Some have put the number of students at around 175, and East Greenbush says it would lose a tax base of about $6 million, based on the current development.

All Times Union materials copyright 1996-2005, Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation, Albany, N.Y.

First Published Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Lessons From Our Neighbors
By James Sheldon

At Arlington High School, the classrooms were cropping up everywhere. On the stage of the auditorium, in the art studio, in what once had been home to a thriving music program. After lunch, the cafeteria doubled as a gymnasium because the gym was divided up to house four classrooms. Class sizes, once 20 to 25 students, topped 30. There was gridlock in the hallways. Tempers flared. Teachers were unhappy. Administrators were over-stretched. Everyone was on edge.

It took three years before the Arlington Central School District in mid-Dutchess County
managed to relieve the over-crowding by completing a major expansion of its high school, at a cost of $38 million. Two years later, faced with similar disruptions at jam-packed middle and elementary schools, the district board asked voters to approve a $44 million bond to build two new schools. The new buildings, which opened last fall, have solved the crowding in younger grades with room to spare. But back at the high school, classrooms are once again brimming to capacity, and the district is once again reviewing its options for expansion.

This portrait from Arlington is a familiar one to many school districts that have been forced to absorb rapidly rising enrollments caused by widespread housing development that swept through much of Dutchess County and the mid-Hudson Valley in the 1990s.

With the development wave quickly moving north, school boards in the smaller, rural districts serving Columbia and northern Dutchess towns are faced with similar and, probably, much more severe challenges. How well these elected boards manage to predict and regulate the impact of growth will determine whether their schools can maintain their current educational standards and at what cost to district taxpayers.

In the Pine Plains Central School District, which includes nine northern Dutchess and southern Columbia towns, developers are seeking approvals to build more than 1,300 new houses. Judging by comparable trends in Arlington and elsewhere, if 1,000 homes were built over a five-year period, they would add 1,350 new students to the district, nearly doubling the current enrollment of 1,400.

Beyond the stress and overcrowding in the classrooms, the financial cost of accommodating such a large influx of new students would, in five years time, increase the current annual school levy to existing tax payers by 75%, according to a preliminary analysis by this columnist.

Pine Plains school taxes for the coming year are budgeted at $13 million. Research indicates that the addition of another 1,000 homes would, in five years time, create an additional deficit of $11.5 million, or a gap of $11,500 between the cost of educating kids from each new house and the tax revenues that each house contributes to the school district. The higher costs would be shared by all taxpayers in the district, including the new residents, but the vast majority—more than 80%, according to U.S. Census data-- would fall on today’s property owners.

Taxpayers will also suffer from the rising cost of educating the current student body, a bill which experts expect will continue to increase at 8% annually. Faced with the dual burden of cost inflation and 1,350 new students, the average homeowner today would see his school taxes more than double in five years, the preliminary research indicates.

Asked to comment on these estimates, Superintendent of Schools Linda Kaumeyer replied, “The Pine Plains Central School District cannot endorse any (research) model that is not commissioned by the Pine Plains Board of Education.”

Ms. Kaumeyer added that the board is looking to launch demographic studies and other research that will help the district estimate the potential costs and disruptions posed by the new subdivisions.

Could the burden of 1,000 new homes prove less damaging to the schools and the taxpayers who support them? Possibly. The developers who aim to build 975 homes on the 2,000-acre Carvel estate in Pine Plains claim that the houses will be sold to upscale weekenders whose children will not be attending local schools. But several experienced realtors are skeptical, suggesting there is little demand for the Carvel plan from weekenders. Instead, they see plenty of appetite for mid-priced, full-time homes from suburban New York families looking for cheaper housing, quieter surroundings and solid public schools-- the same package that has drawn thousands of similar families to Arlington and other nearby districts over the past 15 years.

What else can local school boards do to prepare for the possibility, if not the probability, that the housing market may deliver a huge and expensive crop of new students in the coming years?

“One of the things we can do is become an informed partner in the subdivision review
process,” said Susan von Reusner, a member of the Red Hook School Board, which has taken an active and formal role in advising town planning boards in the district how to quantify and cope with the costs of rapid growth.

Among other steps, Red Hook officials have explored zoning policies that would delay
excessive development until the school district and the town can provide the facilities and public services needed to absorb the increased population. Similar approaches to “phasing in” development, which have worked successfully in Maryland, Massachusetts and other states, will be the topic of a future column.

The previous article is from the web site http://gallatinviews.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, April 26, 2005
A Question of Appearances
By James Sheldon

The recent wave of subdivision proposals flooding the dockets of town planning boards in our region has raised concern among many residents that town officials could find themselves torn between their public duties in reviewing the proposed developments and their private financial interests.

State law provides some guidance on particular arrangements that constitute “financial conflicts of interest” and offers specific measures that public officials should take to disclose and manage these conflicts. But the law has little to say when it comes to a multitude of “potential” or “perceived” conflicts likely to crop up in the daily workings of small town government, deferring instead to more vague, qualitative standards of ethics.

"Public officials are obligated to avoid circumstances which compromise their ability to make impartial judgments solely in the public interest,” the New York State Attorney General’s Office has written in promoting suitable standards of conduct for local government officials. “Even the appearance of impropriety should be avoided in order to maintain public confidence in government."

It is public opinion, rather than legal sanctions, that seems to be the final arbiter of many suspected conflicts of interest. Few town officials have ever been sued or indicted for committing an “apparent” impropriety. But many whose financial dealings have stirred public suspicion have later paid the penalty at the ballot box.

One case in point, which has raised significant outcry, is now under scrutiny in the northern Dutchess County town of Pine Plains. The town supervisor, Gregg Pulver, has agreed to sell his home and adjoining land owned by his parents to the developer of Village Green, a large proposed subdivision abutting his property. If the subdivision is approved by the Town Planning Board it would transform the town’s main hamlet with 280 residential units and 150,000 square feet of commercial space.

The sales price for the Pulvers’ house and 16 acres fronting on Route 83 is $900,000,
according to a portion of the contract that Mr. Pulver disclosed after requests by local
newspapers. Though he has not released the entire contract, Mr. Pulver said that, under its provisions, he would finance $435,000 of the sales price at a 6% annual interest rate for up to 30 months. He and his family would also be able to continue living in the house for no payment other than property taxes for that 30-month period.

The supervisor emphasized that the sale, which has yet to close, is not contingent on Village Green receiving any approvals from the Planning Board.

The contract, which with interest and rent-free allowances is worth close to $1 million, values the Pulvers’ house and land at roughly twice the amount paid for comparable properties in the area, according to local realtors. The developers apparently find significant extra value in the property because it would give Village Green the access it needs to County Route 83 in order to channel traffic into the heart of the subdivision.

There are no laws, according to several attorneys interviewed, that prevent the supervisor from selling his property. As long as Mr. Pulver discloses the existence of the sale, which he has, and recuses himself from any Town Board proceedings involving Village Green, which he has promised to, there is little that residents can do under the law to challenge the sale or even to force disclosure of further details of his contract. But the ethical issues are more complex.

The Pine Plains Code of Ethics, in boilerplate language adopted by many small New York towns in 1975, states that a town employee “shall endeavor to pursue a course of conduct which will not raise suspicion among the public that he is likely to be engaged in acts that are in violation of his trust.”

Many town residents have complained that by selling this particular property, which now becomes a crucial cornerstone of the Village Green plan, Mr. Pulver is reaping a financial windfall at the expense of the town and is demonstrating his support for the rapid growth, increased traffic and higher property taxes that Village Green and other proposed developments would bring to Pine Plains.

“I don’t believe that people who have a civic responsibility and are in a position of trust
should be negotiating for their personal gain with developers,” said Connie Young, a full-time Pine Plains resident since 1995 and a former secretary to the Town Planning Board. “If he wants to sell his property—fine. But he should first resign as town supervisor. He should go for the money or the job.”

Mr. Pulver disputed the view that the sale is unethical or in any way biases his view of the Village Green project.

“It’s a family business decision,” he said, explaining that the developer first approached Mr. Pulver’s parents to sell the acreage they own surrounding his home.

The developers “felt they needed the access to the rest of the property from that location. My parents wanted to sell,” Mr. Pulver said. “I was left with the option of living next to something I may not want to live next to.

“Something will happen to that (Village Green) property someday and it could devalue my property by half,” he added.

Now in his second term as supervisor, Mr. Pulver comes up for re-election again this
November. Noting his career of public service and years of volunteer work in the town, he said, “My record stands on its own, and I’m willing to let the voters decide when the time comes.”

The previous article is from the web site http://gallatinviews.blogspot.com/

First Published Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Making An Impact

By James Sheldon
As more and more towns in our region consider zoning revisions, building moratoriums and other steps to address the onslaught of large-scale development, one underlying question rises to the surface again and again: exactly how much can be done to prevent the suburban sprawl and skyrocketing property taxes that typically come with rapid growth?

The answer seems to be: quite a lot, certainly much more than many planners and politicians would like us to believe.

“Local governments in New York State have a wide swathe of authority to invent techniques needed to encourage appropriate uses of the land,” says Professor John Nolon of Pace University’s Land Use Law Center in White Plains.

With the right “techniques” in hand, towns can consider a broad gamut of options from rejecting outright a proposed subdivision to forcing revisions, density reductions and financial compensation from developers.

The primary law that enables towns in New York to regulate development is the 30-year-old State Environmental Quality Review Act, or SEQRA, which governs the planning review of most large subdivisions. Under SEQRA, local governments are required by law to identify the “negative environmental impacts” that a development may have on the community and to impose measures that prevent or at least contain the damage.

SEQRA extends its scope well beyond preserving wetlands and insuring clean drinking water. Protecting a community’s economic health and even its scenic character are equally important aims of the law. State courts, for example, ruled in 1998 in favor of the small town of North Elba near Lake Placid which rejected an application by Wal-Mart to build a new superstore “based on the adverse impact expected on the downtown merchants and the scenic character of the area,” Professor Nolon noted.

Towns also have the ability under SEQRA to assess one-time fees on developers to cover the fair and carefully estimated costs of providing public services to the new development’s future residents or businesses. For the past 15 years, the Town of Colonie, just north of Albany, has charged “mitigation fees” to developers of as much as $4,500 per home to cover the cost of supplying new houses with adequate roads, water, schools, recreation and fire safety.

Under lobbying pressure from realtors and builders, the New York Legislature has so far rejected pleas from school districts and towns to pass specific legislation that would enable them to assess impact fees to defray the property tax increases caused by most developments. Lawyers, however, seem confident that town planning boards can follow Colonie’s lead today and impose the charges under existing SEQRA rules.

“SEQRA is an enabling statute for assessing a range of fees and obligations against individual developers when there are discernible impacts that the fees or obligations will be used to mitigate,” said Brian Morgan, a leading municipal attorney with the Orange County firm of Jacobowitz and Gubits.

The biggest economic impact from large new developments often falls on the shoulders of the surrounding school district’s taxpayers, and school boards, long excluded from the planning review process, are beginning to take note. Although school boards have no authority to assess impact fees directly, they can quantify the likely cost of educating students from the proposed homes and can exert influence on planning boards to focus on the “negative impact” of higher taxes in their SEQRA review and subsequent decision.

In a move closely watched by school boards across our region, the Spackenkill School District in Poughkeepsie has hired an attorney and commissioned impact studies in the hope of influencing the Town Planning Board’s review of a 470-unit housing development proposed in the district.

The Planning Board could ignore the district’s findings, but only “at its own peril,” Mr. Morgan said.

“Any professional appraisal of an impact should not be ignored,” he added, “though it could be contested as to whether it holds up against a competing study done by the developer.”

Whether the economic impact on the school and other public services will be sufficient to turn the Planning Board against the proposed development remains to be seen. But with several thousand homes now making their way through the approval process at planning boards around the region, it will be interesting to see how our elected town and school officials choose to weigh the negative impacts of growth and whether they have the courage to make a positive impact of their own

The previous article is from the web site http://gallatinviews.blogspot.com/

First Published Friday, January 14, 2005

Once Upon A Time…
By James Sheldon
Once upon a time, in a quiet storybook town very much like our own, citizens awoke one morning to a shock: seemingly overnight, the town’s population had doubled, everyone’s property tax bills had tripled, school classrooms were jammed to capacity, and many long-time residents could not afford to buy or rent a home anywhere in town.

This storybook town is not in some far off sprawling suburb, but right down the road on the Dutchess-Columbia border. And its tale of reckoning is not set in the distant future, but, very possibly, within the next five or six years. The town is Pine Plains—not as it stands today, but as it could be if current proposals to more than double the number of homes in the town are approved without substantial municipal efforts to moderate such explosive growth.

As trends elsewhere in the region and the nation suggest, large housing developments and a growing population almost always lead to higher property taxes for all residents of a community and its surrounding school district, which in Pine Plain’s case includes a large chunk of southern Columbia County. If the Pine Plains Planning Board does approve even a fraction of the 1,300 homes currently under review, it is not a question of whether town and school taxes will rise and but when and by how much.

“Everywhere we go, towns tell us, ‘We need to bring in more residences to build up our tax base.’ But that’s not usually what happens,” said Nan Stolzenburg whose firm, Community Planning and Environmental Associates, is a lead consultant to the Pine Plains Planning Board.

“It’s too early to say,” Ms. Stolzenburg added, what the impact will be on taxpayers from the four major proposals now facing the Planning Board: the 975-unit Carvel country club development, the 285-home Village Green subdivision on Route 83, the 49-apartment senior citizen complex on Route 199, and a 40-house project on Lake Road.

Town and school officials have voiced concern over possible tax increases, but they have deferred taking any action until they receive later this year the so-called “fiscal impact” studies, prepared by the developers’ consultants, which aim to analyze the financial effects of their projects on schools, roads, fire, police and other public services.

“We need to get a lot more information on what the economic impact will be and what we can do to mitigate it,” said Town Supervisor Gregg Pulver, who noted that the Carvel development alone is ten times larger than the biggest subdivision the town has ever approved before.

“If the Planning Board is unhappy, they can say no,” Mr. Pulver said. “But there’s a lot of legwork to be done first.”

The financial studies, along with “environmental impact statements,” are also designed to spark public debate on which, if any, measures should be taken to scale back the proposed subdivisions or to require the developers themselves to cover some of the resulting public costs.

As these studies emerge in the months ahead, this column will try to analyze the sources of higher costs likely to face local taxpayers. We will also examine planning strategies used elsewhere to reduce the public cost of rapid development.

Some of the issues we hope to address include:
School Taxes: Accounting for two-thirds of a typical property tax bill, school costs are highly sensitive to new residential development. Based on trends in other Dutchess towns, an influx of 1,300 new homes in Pine Plains would almost double the current enrollment of the school district, requiring major investments in new school buildings, buses and staff. Though no official cost estimates yet exist, the resulting deficit could easily lead to a more than two-fold increase in school taxes for every house in the district.

The actual deficit may well be much less, but how much less is open to debate. If the Carvel developers, for instance, sell houses only to weekenders, and all at high prices, the school district could gain in net tax revenues, but it would also lose much of its state aid, which last year covered $6 million of the total $19 million school budget. And, as Supervisor Pulver pointed out, “Second homes one day become primary homes.”

The Pine Plains School Board “has been talking and thinking about the issue,” said Chairwoman Sara Doar, noting that the board has discussed the need for a demographic study to better understand the budgetary effects of enrollment from new developments.

Public Safety: Doubling the town’s population could more than double the cost of providing adequate road, fire, police and other services. A recent study for the Town of Rhinebeck concludes that converting the current all-volunteer fire department to a “partially paid” squad, manned mainly by volunteers with some professionals, would quadruple the current tax levy on all homes served.

Public Works: Maintaining roads, water and sewage systems comprise the largest part of a town’s annual budget. The underlying issue seems to be that even if developers build the roads and systems, will the town be obliged to maintain them and at what cost?

Among possible responses to the concerns outlined above, future columns will address:

Impact Fees: In many states, municipalities have required developers to pay for the increased costs for public services.

Transfer Taxes: Some towns and counties charge a special tax on home sales, which is earmarked for preserving open space and funding other strategies that can reduce the fiscal impact of residential development.

Purchase of Development Rights: With funds supplied, in part, by town taxpayers, these “PDR” programs can save a lot of money. A recent bond issued by Red Hook to purchase potential housing sites could over time save $5 for every $1 invested. (See Nov. 30 Column for details.)

Threshold Moratorium: A few counties in Maryland have laws that halt home building once demands on the current public infrastructure reach capacity. Before lifting the moratorium, the county and developers must agree on how to finance the additional services needed to meet future growth.

Affordable Housing: Sadly, most communities attracting rapid development find that home prices are pushed beyond the reach of many native residents. In addition to providing direct incentives to developers of lower-cost homes, some states and towns require developers to set aside a certain portion of their subdivision for “affordable” housing. Efforts now underway in the towns of Copake and North East to supply affordable housing will be the topic of next month’s column.

The previous article is from the web site http://gallatinviews.blogspot.com/

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