The Waitsfield Select Board, at its March 28 meeting, discussed an open space tax stabilization agreement outline with Mad River Path director Autumn Foushee and Path Association board chair Laura Brines.
Brines and Foushee brought the issue back to the board this week, after initially raising it last fall. Since that time the Neill family, which has allowed the Mad River Greenway to run along its land for 20 years, has indicated that they want to rescind the license allowing the path on their land.
Tax stabilization agreements for landowners who allow the public access to their land can take several forms. They can be locally created or towns can use a state model that defines a five-year agreement where municipal taxes on a parcel of land kept as open space, which is open to the public, are reduced by half.
Foushee told the board that based on Waitsfield’s 2010 Grand List and tax numbers, providing such an abatement program for the landowners who provide public access to open land in Waitsfield would reduce the Grand List by 0.17 percent. Such an agreement provides the tax break, under Vermont statute, for the entire parcel on which the path crosses.
Select board members asked for clarification as to whether the state-sanctioned open land tax abatement program could co-exist with current use and whether it meant that a parcel of several hundred acres would receive the abatement, even though the path, or public access, required only a fraction of that land.
Foushee said that a draft stabilization agreement, permitted by Vermont State Statute 24 VSA, 2721, spelled out eligibility requirements, but that it did provide the abatement for the entire parcel and also that it could co-exist with current use.
Town Administrator Valerie Capels said that of the 20 or so parcels of land in Waitsfield that the path crosses, only four parcels met the criteria for eligibility.
“Why wouldn’t we find a way of including all the landowners who provide path access rather than only those who meet the criteria for open land?” asked select board member Charlie Hosford.
“What’s not to say that a town couldn’t create its own tax incentive program?” Brines asked.
“We have a precedent here for targeting things we’d like to preserve. Our farmland tax stabilization program has specific criteria. We can create a program that meets our criteria. What I see as the slippery slope is that there are other recreational donors who make their land available to the public. If we target just property that the path crosses and no other recreational property is considered, we could get in trouble,” Hosford said.
“I think we do need to think about equity among landowners who make their land open for the path and the public. We need to be careful and clear about the overall goal and make sure that it is fairly made available to anyone,” board chair Kate Williams said.
Foushee and Brines thanked the board for the feedback and agreed to work on draft language for the board to review, with a goal of bringing an abatement program to voters by November or next March.
{loadnavigation}
