[Hvcatskillcewg] Subdivisions

[Lynn Bowdery]

Hi All-

My town of New Paltz has had several cluster subdivisions in which the town 
has accepted a conservation easement on the land to remain open space.  
These easements confer no tax benefits to the owners of the property unless 
the tax assessor sees fit to reduce their assessment because the land can 
not be further subdivided.  I have suggested to some of the people in town 
government that they should set up a contractual arrangement with the 
Wallkill Valley Land Trust to prepare the baseline documents and do the 
monitoring for them.  As part of the subdivision process, the town can have 
the developer pay a fee to cover the costs of the baseline and contribute to 
stewardship endowment fund.  So far, we haven't heard from the Town, but it 
would seem like a win-win situation, enabling the land trust to strengthen 
its staffing and the town wouldn't have to stretch its employees even more.

I am wondering if there is any qualitative distinction between conservation 
easements held by land trusts and municipalities-- can a municipality more 
easily annul or change an easement it holds?  If they fail to adequately 
protect their easements, do they become invalid?

All for now.

Lynn Bowdery




>From: "Carissa Haberland" <carissa at oclt.org>
>To: <hvcatskillcewg at lists.ltanet.org>
>Subject: [Hvcatskillcewg] Subdivisions
>Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2007 11:41:03 -0400
>
>Hello Everyone-
>
>Here is a topic for a little coffee talk...
>
>Many of the Town Planning Boards are encouraging "conservation
>subdivisions". To be over simplified, they grant a smaller lot sizes to the
>developers (higher concentration of homes) if they leave a greater
>percentage of the parcel undeveloped. In many cases the "open space" of the
>subdivision is left as a separate parcel in the end of the process. The 
>Land
>Trust is frequently approached to accept a conservation easement on the
>"open space", which usually ends up in the ownership of an HOA, or accept
>the donation of the parcel fee simple. (As a completely unverified and
>speculative observation, I have  noticed several of these up for tax sale.)
>
>Anyway, the Land Trust has made it quite clear that we are not interested 
>in
>taking on responsibility of what is frequently the scraps of development. 
>We
>have expressed to Towns and the County that our involvement in any
>development projects should be up front and our goal is to protect the
>resources completely, not partially. As a result of the amount of these
>requests, I am asking that our organization establish a separate set of
>criteria for conservation subdivision projects that we will participate in
>but I feel we need to do something more to help out the Towns.
>
>I tend to lean toward NOT encouraging Towns to hold easements but with 
>these
>subdivision situations it does not make sense for us to hold them. I am
>thinking of encouraging the inclusion of the conserved area into the
>individual lots rather than keeping it a separate parcel. Is it something
>you all feel the building departments or other departments of towns would 
>be
>better able to enforce and maintain if flagged properly?
>
>Talk amongst yourselves...
>
>Carissa
>
>Carissa D. Haberland
>Director of Stewardship Programs
>Orange County Land Trust
>P.O. Box 2442
>Middletown, NY 10940
>(845) 343-0840
>(845) 341-0898 (fax)
>carissa at oclt.org
>www.oclt.org <http://www.oclt.org/>
>
>
>P  Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail
>
>


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