Our little town
Our town has always been one of land and forest…a place where tall pines poke out of the woods and the fields of farms are a welcome sight in the landscape. If you were hunting, walking to your favorite fishing spot, hiking the trails, or snowmobiling in these forests, you could go for miles without seeing another person, but would most often see deer, turkeys, hawks, or the tracks of squirrels everywhere. You’d eventually come to someone’s home along the way; perhaps a farm where there were broad expanses of beautiful fields, often with cows or horses grazing.
You might come to a dirt road that you knew - or even one you didn’t - that would curve away from you in both directions. All this time, you would only hear the sounds of the woods or the lowing of the cows. Things have changed in recent years. In many places the forests have been displaced with new homes, the sounds you hear now are not those of birds chittering in the trees but those of lawnmowers or heavy equipment ripping the ground open for another cellar hole. When you travel down our back roads you see more and more houses and less and less forest or open field. This is the process of development, but at what point do we lose our small town atmosphere? The open space that we have enjoyed for so long is disappearing, and one day we will all wake up and realize that it’s gone.
Aren’t you worried at how fast land is being developed in our town?
The results of the survey done for the 2003 Master Plan Update said that we don't want Greenfield to change, and that we want to preserve our small town’s rural character. Development is accelerating at an alarming rate. Pretty soon we won’t have that small-town feel anymore. If you’re a long-time New Hampshire resident, you’ll know the feeling of driving through, say, Milford, and shaking your head over what a nice, sleepy little town it used to be. THAT COULD HAPPEN TO GREENFIELD!
Greenfield’s Open Space Committee
Who are we? Officially, we are a sub-committee of the Conservation Commission. In fact, we are a handful of town residents, just like you. Some of us have lived here for a short time, some for a good portion of our lives, and some in between. The thing that we all have in common is that we want to preserve open space in Greenfield.
Our purpose, our plan.
We are working to devise criteria that will be used to rate tracts of land in order of environmental and aesthetic importance, cost, and availability. This rating system will allow the town to identify the importance and merits of a parcel of land. Once parcels are identified, there are varying methods of protecting them, all of which would not be possible without the willing cooperation of concerned, interested landowners. In order to accomplish this, it is necessary to raise some money, and that is where this warrant article comes into play. We want to accomplish this with as little fiscal impact as possible – we might even be able to create positive fiscal impact. After all, we’re taxpayers, too.
The warrant article.
At Town Meeting in March the Open Space Committee will ask you to vote on a warrant article to request that more funds from the land use change tax (LUCT) be put into the Conservation Fund. The land use change tax is the penalty landowners pay when they develop land by taking it out of current use. Currently, the Conservation Fund receives 100 percent of the funds with an annual cap of $5,000, with the balance going into the General Fund. At today’s land prices, $5,000 per year does not provide nearly enough funds for preserving open space. Greenfield needs to be putting aside funds now to protect land for ourselves and our children. Now is the time to start the process of protecting what makes Greenfield, Greenfield.
Questions, questions.
We just had a big tax increase. How will this affect my tax rate?
In the next fiscal year, the Selectmen estimate that approximately $160,000 of town budget dollars translate to about $1 per thousand in the town tax rate. The budget for 2007 estimates $60,000 in LUCT fees. Using a proportion as a calculation, we find that this sum is equivalent to roughly $.38 per thousand.
How can we afford to increase conservation funding in Greenfield?
How can we afford not to? A study of 234 New Hampshire towns found that taxes increased as development increased. New homes mean more demands on town resources including fire, emergency rescue, police, and schools. In the last four years, 50 building permits were granted for new homes. Currently, proposed developments for Gulf and Sawmill roads would add at least 30 new homes and 30 new duplexes. The taxes brought in by these new families won’t cover the resources these properties and their inhabitants need. The way to decrease pressure on our resources and school system is to reduce the growth of new homes.
What is this Cost of Community Services thing I keep hearing about?
Studies done all over the state show that residential building lots generate LESS income than the town needs to provide services for them! Services are composed of school, roads, fire, police and town administration – whatever’s called for in the budget. These are called Cost of Community Services studies, and while such a study hasn’t been done for Greenfield, it is now a well-accepted fact everywhere in the state. An example would be this: in a 2002 study in Brentwood, residential building lots cost the town $1.17 in services vs. the $1 they generate in tax revenue. Open space costs the town only $.83 in services for that same $1! That’s a positive $.17 less in services than the revenue the parcel generates!
With our taxes increasing all the time, don’t we need the revenue that those building lots generate?
According to the above study, the more building you allow, the more your tax rate increases.
Won’t the town be taking money from the tax base by helping residents put conservation easements on their land?
No. Many of the larger tracts of undeveloped land are in current use. These properties add very little to the tax base now. By using the funds to help residents put conservation easements on their land, the land stays in private hands and preserves the tax base. Landowners with conservation easements can continue to actively manage the land and generate income by harvesting wood and operating farms.
We have zoning laws in place that check development. Why do we need this, too?
Because the zoning laws are not enough. They are constantly being challenged and variances are being asked for by large, wealthy developers who are only too willing to sue us if they don’t get their way, costing us lots of money in legal fees. Putting land in conservation easement protects the land from development forever.
If this passes, how will the funds be used?
The first priority will be to help residents who want to preserve open space put conservation easements on their land - a way to retain private ownership but ensure that development would never occur. The funds will also be used to leverage other assistance. We plan to use the funds to secure matching grant funds for land purchases. The Monadnock Conservancy and the Piscataguog Watershed Association are both very active in Greenfield and stand ready to help. We can do a lot more if the town had a little more money. These associations are willing to hold conservation easements in Greenfield, so there are no additional administrative or long-term stewardship burdens for the town. As a last resort, we will use the funds to purchase land outright from interested owners.
Why do this now, why not wait or phase in the change over several years?
Important open space will be lost if Greenfield doesn’t act quickly. It is fiscally prudent to spend some money now before land prices get too high and conservation opportunities are lost. Several large tracts of land are currently the target of large development efforts and the town has very few resources to affect or minimize the outcome of these developments. Sooner or later Greenfield will be allocating more money for conservation when enough residents lose a beloved view or woods trail, or suffer the consequences when a housing development overstresses town services. The sooner we start allocating money to saving open space, the further the money will go.
Will taking away developable land affect employment opportunities?
No. There will still be development related jobs in Greenfield and surrounding communities. There are and will remain local opportunities for development and construction work in this area. Residents who wish to preserve their land through conservation easements can designate acreage for a future house lot or lots for their children. Presumably the lots would be accessible to an existing road, not in the middle of the “open space.” The owners of the future homes would have the advantage of the protected land around them.
What lands will be affected?
As mentioned above, we are working on a plan to identify parcels. Conserving your land is a voluntary decision, but we hope that by establishing sufficient funds for protecting open space, more landowners in Greenfield will see that conserving their land brings greater benefits than developing it.
How can I have a say in this? To learn more, come to a meeting of the Open Space Committee on the second Wednesday of each month at 7:00 pm, upstairs in the Town Offices on Sawmill Rd. For more information, call Janet Romanelli, Chair of the Open Space Committee, at 547-3433, or e-mail jromane202@verizon.net. The warrant article will be voted on at Town Meeting on March 16th. The only way you can affect its destiny is to COME TO TOWN MEETING AND VOTE.
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