If volunteers on the Town of Gardiner’s Community Preservation Plan Task Force have their way, and the wheels of municipal bureaucracy turn smoothly enough, Gardiner residents will be voting this coming November on a referendum that would create a regular revenue stream for the protection of local natural and cultural resources. If passed, a real estate transfer tax on the sale of real properties — by New York State Law, not exceeding two percent per $1,000 of the portion of the price in excess of $180,000 — would provide the means to establish and replenish a Community Preservation Fund. In 2020, New Paltz became the first municipality in Ulster County to approve such a measure, estimated to generate $3.5 million in tax revenue specifically dedicated to local resource protection.
At the April 5 Gardiner Town Board meeting, consulting attorney Christine Chale of Rodenhausen, Chale & Polidoro, LLP spelled out the steps necessary to be taken in the next few months in order to get the required referendum on the November 8 ballot. To enact the transfer tax, the Town must first adopt a Community Preservation Plan, conduct a State Environmental Quality Review on the measure, hold a public hearing, set up the structure for a Community Preservation Fund and then file a timely request for the referendum with the Board of Elections.
“The Plan has to specify the priorities for the use of the Fund,” Chale explained. These priorities are currently being formulated by the Task Force, whose members were drawn from Gardiner’s Planning Board, Environmental Conservation Commission, Open Space Commission and Clean Drinking Water Committee, as well as local farmers. With advice from the Trust for Public Land, the Task Force is working with templates provided by other municipalities that already have Community Preservation Funds in place, and will tweak these guidelines to reflect the priorities of Gardinerites as reflected in a survey currently being administered. Town of Gardiner residents aged 18 and up can get a hard copy of the survey at Town Hall or the Gardiner Library, or fill it out and submit it online at www.townofgardiner.org/community-preservation-plan. The deadline to take the survey is April 24.
The survey divides the local resources that might be protected under a Community Preservation Plan into the following categories: farmland and agricultural resources; meadows, forests, wildlife habitat and the Ridge; scenic views and rural character; parks, trails and recreation; rivers, streams, wetlands, and drinking water; and historic properties and the Gardiner Hamlet. Respondents are asked which of these aspects of community character they see as most endangered by development and to specify which three they think should be the top priorities for protection with Community Preservation Fund monies. “No preservation needed” is also a listed option.
Once drafted and adopted, the Community Preservation Plan would need to be updated every five years, according to Chale. The Fund would be administered by an advisory board of five or seven members with expertise in the area of resource preservation. Expenditures could be used to purchase development rights or conservation easements on agricultural lands, the attorney noted; but protection of properties that accommodate public use, such as parks, trails, scenic lookouts and boat landings, would otherwise be “preferred” under the State legislation that makes such dedicated transfer taxes possible.
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