Save on taxes with a 'Yes!' vote on Ballot Question 3

RELEASE: Oct. 26, 2007 – Volume XXXIX, No. 43

This coming Election Day, New Jersey voters will be asked to continue the state’s successful and longstanding open space preservation program. In spite of news about New Jersey’s budget crisis and high property taxes, open space is still a smart investment. Passage of Public Question 3 is, in fact, essential to our state’s fiscal health - and our own wallets.

Land preservation has been funded over the past 10 years by voter-approved bonds, but these funds are running dry. Without Question 3, New Jersey’s open space preservation activities will grind to a halt. Approval of Public Question 3 would authorize an additional $200 million to fund land preservation efforts for one more year while we seek a stable, long-term funding source.

If you’ve ever supported a local open space tax in your town or county, you know that the success of local efforts depends on state matching funds. Last year alone, the Garden State Preservation Trust helped protect over 25,000 acres of New Jersey farmland and open space – projects like the 86-acre Caltabiano Farm in Pilesgrove Township, Salem County, which allowed a farmer to preserve and expand a family farm. Or the 337-acre St. Michael Orphanage property preserved this year, adding to a belt of green around Hopewell Borough in Mercer County. Or the wooded, 14-acre Clark Wildlife Habitat & Preserve surrounding the Middlesex Reservoir, a greenway being assembled piece-by-piece in Union County. All these lands – and many others - were preserved in large measure with state funds!

If we miss the chance to save more lands like these, developers won’t miss the chance to build on them. The net result of more development will be higher taxes. A study by Burlington County’s Office of Land Use Planning, for example, found new residential units require $1.48 for services like police, fire, schools, roads and sewers for every $1.00 collected in property taxes. In contrast, farmland costs only $0.27 for every $1.00 taken in.

And natural ecosystems simply do a variety of jobs better and more cheaply than man-made alternatives. A recent N.J. Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) study estimates the value of ‘eco-services’ like flood control, water supply and filtration, soil retention, wastewater treatment and plant pollination at a minimum of $8.6 billion per year. Then there’s the mitigating effect of preserved forests and wetlands on global climate change. A single tree absorbs one ton of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the air during its lifetime!

Finally, factor in the revenue generated by agriculture, outdoor recreation and historic tourism, and you’ll see that our open space, farmland and historic sites more than carry their fiscal weight.
If conservation efforts across the state are hampered by a lack of state funds, we will pay much higher prices in the long run, in the form of increased property taxes and billions of dollars needed to replace lost eco-service benefits.

Protecting open space is one of the wisest investments we can make at this – or any – time. A “Yes” vote on Ballot Question 3 will save more than one kind of green. You can learn more about Question 3 from the Keep It Green campaign at www.outdoorrecreationalliance.com/kig.org. And I hope you’ll contact me at info@njconservation.org, or visit NJCF’s website at www.njconservation.org, for more information about conserving New Jersey’s precious land and natural resources.

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