The sprawling 1,000-unit Durst subdivision proposed on the Dutchess-Columbia border has turned a critical corner with the developer apparently conceding to a drastic reduction in the scale of his original project and a redesign of its layout that would protect environmental resources.
Now in its fourth year of a public review led by the Pine Plains Town Planning Board, the Durst development remains a long way from approval, but recent statements from the developer, town officials and citizen leaders opposing the plan suggest that a much smaller, more compact subdivision could be up for final consideration by early next year.
Columbia County’s recent ruling to deny large tax breaks to the developer of a 565,000-square-foot shopping center is a commendable decision, but it was made for the wrong reasons and it highlights the complexities of offering taxpayer subsidies to promote private commerce in our towns.
The following is a copy of a letter to the Pine Plains Town Planning Board, the lead agency charged with reviewing the potential impacts of Douglas Durst’s proposed 1,000-home subdivision.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Planning Board:
The Durst Organization has produced for you a labyrinth of numbers in its 1,500-page Environmental Impact Statement, all of which paint a glowing portrait of an environmentally sensitive, financially beneficial windfall for our rural communities.
I would like to focus your attention on ten simple, common-sense numbers which, when studied along with supporting data I will submit later, should help to convince you that the Carvel Development will not look anything like the upscale golfing resort proposed and that it could well become a financial disaster for the town, its property owners, its local businesses and the Pine Plains Central School District.
In a recent blitzkrieg of mailings to our homes, the Durst Organization extols the glories of its past accomplishments, the smiling family at its helm and the “environmental” virtues of its proposed Carvel development. But the glossy brochures, which offer a slew of misleading environmental claims and wildly inaccurate financial projections, neglect to tell us anything about the key players overseeing the project, their motivations or their track record in guiding comparable developments.
One of the mass mailings invites us as “dear neighbors” to “meet the Durst family,” and in this and future postings we hope to get to know the Dursts, not their soothing, sepia-toned portraits gracing the brochures, but their capabilities, their character and their business strategy.
We begin our “Durst Watch” series with links to four columns we’ve published since 2005. The first lays out the basic principles for our analysis of the costs and complications of growth in small towns. The other three explore in more detail the primary cause of tax increases brought on by rapid development: the cost of educating children from the new homes who attend the local public schools.
As the slowing U.S. economy curtails municipal tax revenues across the country, many Hudson Valley counties, including Columbia, Dutchess and Rensselaer, are also facing sharp increases in capital spending on roads and buildings.
The dual perils of declining sales taxes, which comprise 30-50% of a county’s tax revenues, and a large backlog of urgent capital projects will likely put a growing burden on property taxpayers, especially in more heavily indebted counties that cannot borrow much money to fill the fiscal gap.
Candidates sparring for local office in next week’s elections face a bewildering array of statistics they can use to tout their own financial achievements or criticize their opponents’ fiscal failures. Though the numbers are often confusing and occasionally misleading, there are legitimate methods of budget analysis that can be helpful in judging the financial performance of incumbent office holders.
As a case in point, we’ve focused on one contested race where finances are at the center of the campaign and where the stakes are high: the race for supervisor of Columbia County’s largest town, Kinderhook, where the four-term incumbent, Douglas McGivney, is running against Gary Strevell, who has served since 2003 as Mayor of Valatie, one of the incorporated villages within the town.
With local elections fast approaching, the time seems apt to highlight findings from our municipal budget research that may prompt voters to ask tough questions of incumbent office holders and may help candidates provide convincing answers.
We’ve compared data for 28 towns and ten villages in Columbia and northern Dutchess counties with the aim of identifying the best and worst municipalities in terms of their recent financial management, a crucial test for any elected official. The data, from the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC), provide preliminary answers to three basic fiscal questions: 1) How high are taxes in the town or village relative to its peer group; 2) How much have the municipality’s property taxes increased over the past three years; and 3) Are large future tax increases likely due to the town government’s failure to invest sufficiently in upgrading its highway department and road network, which typically account for two-thirds of town spending.
The results of our research, tabulated below, offer merely a rough sketch of fiscal performance, a handy reference guide for voters and candidates seeking to assess the strengths and weaknesses of current office holders.
Two country neighbors, the towns of Gallatin and Taghkanic in southern Columbia County, have a lot in common: rolling vistas of wooded, sparsely populated hills, abundant farms, and little commercial activity or road traffic to disturb the tranquil surroundings. But beneath their rustic setting, in the realm of budget discipline and financial health, the two adjacent towns are worlds apart.
Updated town budget data recently released by the Office of the State Comptroller confirms the findings we published in this column last year and identifies the same three towns as the region’s most fiscally challenged: Taghkanic, Hillsdale and, most worrisome, Greenport.
We have made several enhancements to our analysis of the OSC data, designed to better rank the 28 towns in Columbia and northern Dutchess counties on the quality of their fiscal management and the likelihood they will need large property tax increases in the near future.
Our latest study ranks the towns on five key measures: 1) property taxes per capita; 2) total taxes per capita (including county sales tax receipts); 3) general government expenses per capita, which cover most services other than road maintenance and special districts for water, sewer, trash collection, etc.; 4) highway department costs per road mile; and 5) highway capital investment from 2001-2005 compared to the average for the 28 towns.
A nationwide survey of the costs of providing local police services to large shopping centers raises some thorny questions about the proposed Widewaters mega-mall in Greenport and casts doubt on the town’s assurances of “minimal” tax and crime impacts from the project.
The 2006 survey cites widespread evidence that Wal-Mart stores, particularly the newer 200,000-square-foot “super-centers” of the kind considered for Greenport, lead to much more crime and place far greater demands on local police than mall developers or town planning officials usually anticipate.
The high costs of supporting a larger police presence is one of the reasons why centers like the 550,000-square-foot Widewaters plan typically lead to higher property taxes for town homeowners, despite the sizable tax receipts contributed by the new mall’s owners.
The largest commercial development ever to hit the region is on the verge of slipping through the cracks of a comprehensive planning review typically required under state law.
The 565,000-square-foot retail center, slated for a 130-acre site on Route 9 in Greenport, could double traffic congestion and inflict heavy financial damage on town taxpayers and area businesses, according to many studies on the effects of large retail developments in rural areas. With little public concern raised to date, the Greenport Town Planning Board is nearing the end of its preliminary review of the project with no apparent interest in subjecting it to more thorough questioning, analysis and debate.
A survey of county budgets, by far the largest source of local government taxes levied on New York residents, highlights a few counties for their fiscal discipline, singles out others with especially high taxes and invites more in-depth comparisons on spending for specific programs.
Overall, tax revenues in 22 counties located in and around the Hudson Valley grew by 40% from 1999 to 2004 to $680 per person, more than twice the level of town taxes, according to the latest data available from New York’s Office of the State Comptroller (OSC).
As in previous columns that compared budgets for dozens of towns and villages, the county rankings are a preliminary tool that may overlook sound financial or political reasons why one municipality spends more than its peers. The detailed county rankings are available in our "Budget Scorecard Database" under County Budget Scorecard .
Residents of incorporated villages in our region shoulder a heavy fiscal burden for the additional public services they receive, paying in many cases more than twice as much in local property taxes as their neighbors living outside of village lines.
While typical village services-- such as police, road maintenance, street lighting, and trash collection-- are more extensive and more expensive than what towns typically provide non-village taxpayers, village property owners are also saddled with paying for a portion of the surrounding town’s annual budget. On top of higher taxes, village residents pay costly user fees for the municipal water and sewage systems that most villages provide.
As we did last month for 27 rural towns in Columbia and northern Dutchess counties, we have drawn on 2004 budget data from the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) to rank ten villages in the area in terms of their costs to taxpayers. Only one village in our sample— Millbrook in Dutchess County—stands out as an extraordinarily expensive municipality, while the Columbia County Village of Valatie appears to be an example of how to keep taxes low and manage efficient delivery of key public services.
In an ongoing effort to shed light on what drives our property taxes, and what we can do to control them, this column has begun to take a closer look at the annual budgets of the towns, villages, counties and school districts in our Hudson Valley region.
Working with data compiled by the New York Office of the State Comptroller (OSC), we are aiming to measure the fiscal performance of local governments and school districts, compare them to their peers, and identify key factors they may want to address in order to provide public services in more financially productive ways.
This first installment of the “Budget Scorecard” looks at 27 largely rural towns in northern Dutchess and Columbia counties and concludes that a few towns stand out for fiscal prudence-- notably Milan, Red Hook and Livingston—while the relatively poor showing of others-- including Greenport, Taghkanic and Hillsdale—requires further explanation.
A curious study is making the rounds of our communities, promoting the idea that large-scale residential development is actually a benefit to property taxpayers.
Authored by the Dutchess County Economic Development Corporation (EDC), and funded largely by county taxpayers, the study looks at six recent subdivisions in the Hudson Valley to reach this conclusion, which flies in the face of a large body of research showing that newly built houses require far more in costly public services than they provide in local tax revenues.
A growing number of politicians and citizens have criticized both the methods and the message of the study, which the EDC has presented to dozens of local officials as part of its stated mission “to facilitate and expedite the necessary (local government) approval procedures so that new (construction) projects can be developed.”
A close analysis of the EDC’s calculations, coupled with a bit of common sense, indeed shows that the study’s case for development, at least fiscally speaking, is full of holes.
As applications to build thousands of new homes crowd the desks of planning boards in our rural towns, planners and citizens alike are beginning the tricky task of estimating how much these subdivisions are likely to raise our property taxes to pay for the new schools, roads and other public services their future residents would require.
Much of the debate over forecasting the impact of development on our taxes can be boiled down to a single number: how many children from each of the new proposed homes will enroll in our public schools. With school taxes accounting for more than two-thirds of most property tax bills, and with ample evidence that each new home contributes far less in tax revenues than it absorbs in costly public services, the number of additional school students per newly built home-- the “enrollment ratio--” is one of the keys to predicting the financial impact of development.
How the enrollment ratio is calculated, and on what key assumptions it is based, should be the focus of great attention by our town planning officials as they review the onslaught of new subdivisions now before them.
One of the most effective programs for containing growth and preserving farmland through free-market incentives is well into its third year in the northern Dutchess Town of Red Hook, and its financial advantages and political popularity appear to be as compelling as first advertised.
Red Hook, one of the most progressive municipalities in the region when it comes to grappling with the rising costs to taxpayers of rapid development, has meanwhile adopted additional fiscal innovations that deserve close scrutiny by the dozens of neighboring towns now reviewing their land use regulations.
As our towns and counties unveil their 2006 budgets, officials are once again touting their fiscal discipline by calling the public’s attention to the property “tax rate,” which, they announce with pride, will not rise by much at all or, in many cases, may actually decline.
But the tax rate figure our local governments hold in such high esteem is a totally irrelevant measure of budget restraint and should-- all else being equal-- decline substantially every year.
The growing outcry over rising property tax assessments now grabbing headlines in many Hudson Valley towns highlights the financial complexities and political controversies involved in achieving one of the most basic principles of municipal government: equitable taxation.
A recent spate of grassroots challenges-- including a self-styled “tax revolt” protesting appraisal methods in the Dutchess town of North East and a slew of lawsuits by property owners in the Town of Canaan in Columbia County-- are among many examples indicating that the current system for maintaining fair and updated tax rolls in New York towns is severely flawed.
As election campaigns kick off this month for some 100 open town board seats in our region, most candidates agree that preserving farmland and providing affordable housing are among the issues foremost on voters’ minds, but few, if any, have offered specific proposals to finance these popular though costly initiatives.
There is, however, an effective, fair and timely policy that could raise tens of millions of dollars each year to support land conservation and expand home ownership in Columbia and northern Dutchess counties.
Dear Mr. Durst,
Your Manhattan skyscrapers are honored for their commitment to conserving energy and preserving natural resources. You own the largest organic farm in the state, and you serve as an advisor to the Trust for Public Land, a leading non-profit advocate of protecting agriculture, open space and parkland. When you and your family donated 320 acres of land in the Town of North East to the Nature Conservancy, you commented that you were “pleased to be able to assist in protecting this beautiful place…which will be enjoyed now for many generations to come. ”
What my readers are asking is “Why?”
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.
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.
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.
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.
The real estate boom that has brought jobs and prosperity to the towns of Columbia and northern Dutchess counties over the past five years has also claimed a serious economic casualty: an increasing number of employed and retired residents are unable to afford homes of their own.
As rural towns struggle to meet the affordable housing needs of their citizens, they find themselves caught between dwindling aid programs from state and federal governments and the costly incentives required to lure developers willing to build lower-priced units. While planners in a few towns, including Copake and Northeast, are exploring projects to supply mixed income rental apartments, efforts to provide a fuller range of housing options that might gain wider acceptance in the community are hampered by an acute lack of funding.
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.
“Daisy” is a 1,600-pound Holstein milking cow who, for most of her five-year life, has been grazing on a quiet hillside in the northern Dutchess County town of Red Hook, a familiar symbol of the open spaces, rural lifestyle and agricultural economy that define much of the Hudson Valley. But to the citizens of Red Hook, faced with mounting pressures from new home construction, keeping Daisy grazing is also a way to keep a lid on skyrocketing property taxes.
Red Hook voters last year approved a novel land preservation program—one which is only starting to draw planners’ attention in Columbia County—to address a disturbing economic fact about housing development: on average, a new house costs the surrounding school district about $5,000 more each year than it contributes in new property taxes.
