Town Supervisor Brian Foley announces his support for the Community Preservation Fund.If you live in the Town of Brookhaven, vote "yes" on Proposal 3. That's what NYLCV - along with a broad coalition of environmental, civic and business groups as well as elected officials - is urging on Nov. 6.

Voting "yes" on Proposal 3 will create the Brookhaven Community Preservation Fund, which will allow the town to purchase open space and protect drinking water sources before land is lost to overdevelopment. The initiative would also help redevelop blighted areas of the town by encouraging more building there.

"This is an historic proposal that will provide the next generation of funding for open space purchases, purchases that will ensure that we maintain the quality of life we enjoy and expect in the Town of Brookhaven," Brookhaven Supervisor Brian Foley said.

The 2007 Community Preservation Fund ballot initiative is the result of extensive discussion and planning between town officials, residents, advocacy groups and builders. It calls for assessing a two percent fee on the purchase price of homes over $250,000. First-time homebuyers are exempted, and the fee would not apply to the first $250,000 of any purchase. The Community Preservation Fund is not a sales tax and will never show up on property tax bills. Most Brookhaven residents will never pay the fee at all.

Brookhaven expects to generate between $30 million and $33 million annual for 17 years, after which the law authorizing the fee expires. Every cent raised by the Community Preservation Fund is eligible for matching funds from Suffolk County and New York State -- meaning every dollar raised in town will go twice as far.

The money will be used to help preserve farmland and open space, as well as thousands of acres of the pine barrens that protect the quality of Suffolk County's drinking water. Less development also means less congestion and a break from higher property taxes caused by the need for more services.

One of the reasons the Community Preservation Fund is poised for success at the ballot box is a unique program that would transfer some development rights. One-quarter of the development rights generated in the purchase of an open space parcel would be transferred into a development rights bank, and could be purchased by developers to increase density in their other projects. Proceeds from the sale of development rights would go back into the preservation fund for additional purchases.

Community Preservation Funds have worked for other Suffolk towns. The East End towns have raised nearly $500 million through their CPFs, permanently protecting over 6,000 acres from overdevelopment.

"The Community Preservation Fund is the best means to preserve and protect the most important reason for living on Long Island-quality of life," said Brookhaven Councilman Steve Fiore-Rosenfeld. "Our drinking water, our open spaces, our woodlands, bays, and harbors, our farmlands, our collective natural heritage are all threatened by ‘market pressures.' Instead, they can be preserved with this critically needed instrument."

Newsletter Issue

• Ecopolitics Monthly --- October 2007