Dan's Papers - March 21, 2008 - Be Careful, You Could Get What You Wish For

Without a doubt the single most successful program used to save our farmland in the Hamptons has been the Real Estate Transfer Tax program. Established ten years ago, it requires that anytime any land is sold in excess of $200,000 on the East End, 2% of the cost has to be paid to the town in which the sale occurs.

Before the passage of that law, there were programs designed to save farmland that were tried. All were huge financial burdens on the taxpayers. All had very limited impact. But now, with the Real Estate Transfer Tax, more than a quarter of a BILLION dollars has been raised in the past ten years. It is a huge sum, although when you consider the crazy prices being paid for some properties in these parts, you realize it is just a small piece of the game. Want to buy a piece of farmland for $20 million? Go knock yourself out. But $400,000 of that has to come our way, which we will put in a big pile and use to perhaps purchase the next piece.

This tax money for these ten years has been put into a special fund in each town, and has been, for the most part, brilliantly administrated by environmentalists and other concerned citizens.

The beauty of it all is that we live in what is surely one of the ten or twenty most naturally remarkable places on the planet. We have cliffs, farms, beaches, bays, ponds, meadows, harbors, oceans, ranchlands, wetlands, forests - I could go on and on. It is certainly possible to argue that it is because of these things that we have attracted such a great number of artists, filmmakers, writers and billionaires in recent years - just so they can all share this with us.

In spite of it all, there still remain parcels of land that should be saved but our town fathers say are just plain too expensive, even for the transfer tax. There is a piece of land that just became a matter of concern in Georgica on Lily Pond Lane, for example. It's about 12 acres. But the community says, well, we'll have to pass. It's too rich for the transfer tax program. There are limited resources. And it's true, but we should make use of the money to buy other things.

Now, however, and quite suddenly, our town fathers have been persuaded by people unknown to look at this another way. They read the law founding this preservation fund word for word, looking for nuances and interpretations. The wording reads that this money is to be used for open space preservation, but there is a clause in there saying that some of the funds can be used for costs that come up to administer and take care of what is being saved. Well, the police department has to drive through or alongside there and look out over it to make sure everything is OK. There are kids that sometimes play in this open space. Maybe some of the money could be used to pay for some of the deficits that come up in the school budgets. A judge looked at this interpretation and shot it down.

Just this past week, there were people demonstrating in front of Westhampton Beach Town Hall saying the bits of money that were actually used by the Hampton Bays School District to fund their shortfall should have been considered for a similar shortfall in another part of the town. How could this be?

Well, those who are looking for ways to dip into these funds have stepped one step back from this defeat and then have taken two steps forward. They have authorized a PILOT program for a year, whereby some of these preservation funds COULD be used to patch up education shortfalls under certain circumstances having to do with proximity to the Pine Barrens and percentages of farmland saved.

Also this week, there are the beginnings of an investigation in East Hampton Town to see just how that town has paid out funds to "administer" the preservation tax account. Are there expense accounts involved? Administrators get hungry. Are building projects being funded by this? We need buildings to house administrators. Has some of the money been used to fix up roads? People have to drive over smooth roads to get to some of these saved parcels. We shall see.

The whole thing puts one in mind of the time, a generation ago, when our governor wanted to put in OTB. Those were different times then. Downtowns were shut down on Sundays so people could go to church. Gambling was a sin. Rockefeller promised that all the money raised would go to education in the state. So the people relented. It was for the children. That lasted about three years. Is any OTB money going to education today? Not a dime. So many people got their hands into the OTB money, they just threw it into the general fund to save paperwork tracking where it went. It is there today.

This is, in my opinion, a very bad place that our leaders are taking us. What should come after farm preservation and open land preservation is historic preservation and wildlife preservation. We've spent many years abusing this beautiful place. We should use the money for pollution cleanup or for burying all the power lines underground, or cleaning up our harbors and fields, or for creating bike and walking trails.

You want to see this place go to hell in a handbasket? Use it to patch up every budget that our Town Halls and Village Halls fail to keep under control. What the hell? We need new municipal buildings, new uniforms, new everything, and right there, there it is, just waiting for us to put our hands in. It will become a free-for-all.