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Preservation tax losing steam

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February 12, 2012|By Taryn Plumb

Crowell Chapel in Rosedale Cemetery in Manchester-by-the-Sea. (Town of Manchester-by-the-Sea )

Hundred-acre sweeps of farmland. Iconic lighthouses keeping watch over the unsettled Atlantic. Buildings that embody a town’s heritage or date back to the founding of the country. Accessible housing. Well-used public spaces.

For a decade, the state’s Community Preservation Act has enabled cities and towns across the state to preserve natural treasures and open spaces, shore up historic resources, and provide funds for affordable housing.

Still, in recent years, the once voracious interest in the program has waned, particularly north of Boston, and its future vitality is uncertain, although efforts are underway to reinvigorate it.

There has been a “dramatic decline of communities adopting CPA,’’ said Stuart Saginor, executive director of the state Community Preservation Coalition, which oversees the 10-year-old program.

The biggest reason for this: a precipitous decline in matching money, he said.

The program, which allows cities and towns to opt in through a local vote, raises funds for historic, open-space, recreation, and affordable-housing projects through a local property tax surcharge (ranging from .05 percent to a maximum of 3 percent) and a yearly trust fund distribution from the state raised through a $20 fee placed on all real estate transactions in the Registry of Deeds. Cities and towns that adopt the program then set up a community preservation committee to administer those funds.

Often, to minimize the hit to taxpayers, cities or towns exempt low-income individuals, and/or the first $100,000 valuation of a given property. In a city like Gloucester (which has a 1 percent surcharge) the average additional cost for homeowners is $30 a year, according to community preservation committee cochair J.J. Bell.

In the first six years the CPA was in place - with the first round in October 2002 - participating communities received a 100 percent match. But over the years, as more communities adopted it and the housing market tumbled, that allocation dwindled, Saginor explained.

So in the most recent distribution cycle, last October, The match rate was 26.6 percent.

Simply put, Saginor said, “The decline of communities adopting CPA has mirrored the decline in the trust fund.’’

Still, matching funds or not, some communities are simply loath to further increase their taxes.