A debate is brewing which, though very technical in nature, seeks to answer a question that will largely determine the future of Pine Plains and many neighboring towns: how will the 951-home Carvel subdivision now under review affect property taxes and the financial well-being of the town and surrounding school district?
Well-trained and expensive consulting teams-- one hired by the town and one by the developer-- are already dueling about how best to study the question in an exercise that is nothing short of forecasting the future profile and behavior of the thousands of new residents who would inhabit the homes on the former Carvel estate and more than double the population of the town.
In a recent memo to the Pine Plains Town Planning Board, the town’s consultants write that “we cannot accept any of the findings” of the developer’s “terribly flawed” preliminary study, which claims that the subdivision, proposed by Manhattan billionaire and real estate scion Douglas Durst, will actually reduce town and school taxes by some $4 million per year.
As the Durst group addresses what the town’s experts call “critical errors” in their analysis, we will revisit key aspects of the debate, such as the number of students the development is likely to add to the public school system and how current assessment practices limit the amount of school taxes the new homeowners would likely pay.
We will also refine our own initial analysis, which indicates that adding 951 new homes will increase school taxes alone to existing taxpayers by more than $10 million per year. (See the "Views From Gallatin" column from May, 2005 entitled "Lessons From Our Neighbors.")
In the meantime, it is important not to lose sight of the paramount issue at hand. The planning board is not being asked to approve a high-end golf resort that, as the Dursts envision it, will attract buyers willing to pay an average of $640,000 per home with little interest in sending their children to the public schools. Rather, the board is being asked to approve the creation of 951 building lots, which, once created, can be sold to anyone at any price the market allows regardless of the additional demands the buyers make on public education and other services.
The planning board's consultants may not be able to predict with precision what kind of buyers will emerge for the homes, how many school-aged children they will have, or how much it will cost to staff the fire, police and highway departments needed to serve them. But they do need to acknowledge that, judging from development patterns in every other town in the Hudson valley, the costs of providing those services are likely to be much, much greater than the additional tax revenues received.
The board members themselves need to understand that if their consultants underestimate the net new costs by too wide a margin, their approval of the Durst plan will deprive the town and the school district of the sound financial footing they enjoy now and that they have every right to deserve in the future.
