Response to 5 CPA Misconceptions

As you may have already heard, I'm involved in an effort to get a question on the local November election ballot regarding the adoption of the Community Preservation Act (CPA) in Amesbury.

The Community Preservation Act is a collaborative program between localities and the Commonwealth to raise funds locally for the purposes of:

• preserving open space and historic sites
• developing outdoor recreational facilities 
• creating affordable housing 

The question is not even on the November ballot yet but the debate here in Amesbury has already become quite lively and a good bit of the information I've seen in circulation has been a bit off in my estimation and I thought I'd respond to some of it. Without further ado, here are my comments on the  5 of the more questionable things that I've seen written on Facebook about the CPA so far. Along the way, I hope to highlight some important facts about the CPA program. I'll be writing in more detail about why I support CPA for Amesbury coming up next.

5. Supporters of CPA are like kids with ‘a Sears catalogue at Christmas’: Well, wanting to be in a community that protects and improves its historical assets (and Amesbury is full of them), conserves and improves its open spaces and natural resources, invests in its recreational facilities through continual improvement, and supports housing affordability for its seniors, veterans, and families - that sounds like the best Sears catalogue ever. Should we not want to aim to be a community that is an active custodian and protector of the very things that make it a great place to live? Is aspiring for these things supposed to be a bad thing?

4. “[T]he town loses control of it[self] and the future of our town's livablilty.”: This is an important misrepresentation that needs to be definitively laid to rest. This is exactly opposite of the reality of the CPA program. The fundamental structure of the program is local control of a community preservation fund, in terms of administration, planning, prioritization, and disbursement. True fact - number of personnel at the State level dedicated to 'running' the CPA statewide = 0. Funds are solely managed locally. How? A local committee is created with representatives from existing boards, committees, and commissions with relevant responsibilities - Parks and Recreation Commission, Housing Authority, Conservation Commission, Planning Board, and Historical Commission. Citizens can also be appointed by the Mayor. The CPA Committee would set local guidelines, articulate local funding priorities, set the terms of applying for funds, review all applications for funds, and make recommendations for funding. All disbursements of CPA funds would be subject to City Council approval through a 2/3 vote. CPA is a tool for towns to take control over their 'livability'.

3. “Everything that could be delivered with the CPA could be done without the CPA”

Technically, that is true, so this isn't a misconception. However, the refrain has been that the types of things that CPA could pay for are usually 'wants not needs' and pushing for them are akin to dreaming about rainbows and unicorns. Here's just a few of the many things that CPA could be used for, and this is just based on my own top-of-the-head awareness of current needs, I'm sure others could identify more:

• Improvement of River Trail surface and drainage 
• Replacement of playground equipment at Cashman Elementary 
• Completion of improvements to Collins St. Park 
• Rebuild of Amesbury Skate Park 
• Improved drainage at Cashman ball fields 
• Roof improvements at Amesbury Public Library 
• Saving Whittier Hill from residential development
• Planning and creation of trail network in Amesbury 
• Planning and creation of bike lanes, esp. in the village center 
• Construction of soccer fields at Woodsom Farm 
• Improvements to Amesbury’s War Memorials 
• Improvement/reconstruction of Lake Gardner beach 
• Invasive plant mitigation in Lake Tuxbury, Lake Attitash, and Powow River, to protect out water source and improve their use

To me, these are not luxury items or frivolous expenses. They are the kinds of things that add tremendous social value to our community (and real property value to our homes). A favorite example of mine about how the City has typically approached these sorts of things (looking way back) is the roof at our historic Amesbury Public Library. I would have to go a ways back to find a year that this item was NOT on our city's 5-Year Capital Improvement Plan. Interestingly enough, though, it always shows up as an item on the next year's budget, never on the current year. Next year comes, it has moved to the following year. I understand full well the budgetary constraints that we operate under and that the library roof will always be competing with other important capital needs. But, in the meantime, this community asset - the library - continues to degrade. The purpose of the CPA is to establish a Fund that can support the many projects that at best take years to come to fruition otherwise, while other assets also continue to languish, if not deteriorate. It's great that the youth soccer league leased space two years ago for new fields to be built at Woodsom Farm. How soon and how far into its lease will it go before it is able to identify the $800,000+ that it needs to build the fields? How many fund-raising triathlons will parents have to run to scrape together the estimated $60,000 to replace unusable and outdated playground equipment at Cashman School? The CPA can be a valuable tool to boost, leverage, and supercharge local volunteer efforts and make serious headway against this backlog of needs.

2. “[I]f the CPA were in effect when we acquired Woodsom, no soccer fields. Ever.”: This is another case of opposite day. I believe that what the author had in mind with this comment is that indeed it is true that if land is purchased with CPA funds for the purpose of conserving 'open space', then the Community Preservation Act requires that a so-called 'conservation restriction' be placed on the property and recorded in the deed. What does this mean? Simply that if the purpose of a purchase is to conserve open space, then the property should be, well, conserved in the future (i.e. not developed for commercial or residential use). What's one of the main reasons we might want to conserve a property such as Woodsom Farm and prevent its development for private use? For recreational use by the public. And of course that use is right there in the definition of 'open space' in the Act itself:

“Open space”, shall include, but not be limited to, land to protect existing and future well fields, aquifers and recharge areas, watershed land, agricultural land, grasslands, fields, forest land, fresh and salt water marshes and other wetlands, ocean, river, stream, lake and pond frontage, beaches, dunes and other coastal lands, lands to protect scenic vistas, land for wildlife or nature preserve and land for recreational use.

This sort of scarified (yet inaccurate) statement has been a hallmark of many comments that I've heard so far against the CPA. If CPA had been used to purchase Woodsom Farm way back when (leveraging additional match dollars from the state), nothing that we know about how it is used now - including the placement of soccer fields there - would be different, with one important exception. Right now, there is no protection on the property, nothing that prevents the City from selling it off for development the future, whereas theoretical use in the past of CPA funds to help purchase Woodsom Farm would have ensured its preservation for generations to come. Currently, we have no such assurance in place. Ironically, if CPA funds had been used, we could still have the lease for soccer fields AND the property would be better protected.

1.  “Under the CPA, we could lose control over what kind of lights we could install. That's not local control.” Coming in at #1. Presumably, the author here is talking about the use of CPA funds to rehabilitate historical properties (it seems to relate to a nearby comment on a Facebook thread that referenced lights at City Hall). As with open space purchases, there are some standards associated with use of CPA on historical properties. In particular, it requires that any historic "'rehabilitation' shall comply with the Standards for Rehabilitation stated in the United States Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties codified in 36 C.F.R. Part 68." What does this mean? If a property is deemed 'historic' and CPA is being used for the restoration of a 'historic' property then, well yes, there is some expectation that the restoration would meet standard guidelines for historic restoration. Adoption of CPA by Amesbury, however, does not mean we are creating a city-wide historic district or that we all would need to worry about what kind of windows we can install or what color we can paint our house or that someone will control what kind of lights we can install. [Anyone else remember similar fears from when Amesbury adopted the now-popular Green Communities Act?] And I would think that if we have an desire to preserve (or restore/recreate) the historical integrity of a valued historical property, we'd want to do it in such as way as to preserve, well, its historical integrity.

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I'm hopeful that the CPA question will get on the ballot and I welcome an open and lively debate about it, if it does. I've been discouraged by the level of fear-mongering that I've heard so far about it and hopefully these remarks are a start to setting the record straight on what CPA is (and is not). You can learn more about the Community Preservation Act HERE. Watch this space for more information.