Many years ago my wife helped get a referendum passed in Groton to purchase open space. The allocated funds were never fully spent, because some of the town councilors, who professed to be fans of open space, always seemed to have problems with specific purchases. Nonetheless, as a result of that effort, a lot of space that would now be covered with suburban sprawl is now preserved. That process proved the truth, once again, of Ben Franklin’s observation that you can achieve a lot if you don’t care who gets the credit. To this day one of the political leaders of that era, who we considered a major roadblock to the entire idea, believes the whole thing was his idea.
Which is a round about way of bringing me to the subject of this post: the fact that there is a move afoot in the state legislature to spend real money to preserve what’s left of the character of Connecticut:
A coalition of preservation groups and other organizations wants Connecticut to invest $100 million a year over the next decade to preserve open space land, restore historic buildings and protect the state’s character. A law was enacted last year that set aside $55 million worth of bonding for specific projects. This session, The Face of Connecticut Campaign wants to increase that spending by $45 million more each year — for a total of $1 billion after ten years. “This is what will make Connecticut the place we want to live,” said Sen. Ed Meyer, D-Guilford, who believes the initiative will help fight suburban sprawl across the state. Much of the money would be spent on existing state programs, such as the farmland preservation fund and the Historic Preservation and Planning and Restoration Fund. Under the proposal, there would also be money set aside for new programs, such as efforts to promote urban parks and to protect small, local farms.
This is so enlightened it’s hard to believe it’s being seriously proposed in Connecticut. Our state representative, Lisa Wright, is a proponent of open space, so I assume she’ll be actively supporting this, and I understand that Andy Maynard is also behind it.
There is another way (in addition to, and not in lieu of the foregoing) that the legislature could protect open space, which would not, if properly done, cost taxpayers an extra dime. If the tax system in this state were restructured to drastically reduce local reliance on property taxes, the incentive for towns to roll over for every new strip mall that comes along would be significantly reduced. A move toward regional zoning would be a good idea too, but I’m not so crazy as to believe anything that rational can be achieved in my lifetime.
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