Upper Freehold may seek to increase open space tax BY JANE MEGGITT Staff Writer UPPER FREEHOLD - Residents have asked the Township Committee to raise taxes. Specifically, residents at the governing body's regular meeting on May 3 asked officials to hike up the municipal open space tax. The municipal open space tax currently accounts for 2.4 percent of the 2007 Upper Freehold tax rate. In 2007, a resident paying an estimated tax bill based on the average home assessment of $519,800 would pay $207.92 in municipal open space taxes. The figure is the same as last year. For the year ending Dec. 31, 2006, 61.6 percent of the township's overall debt allocation was for open space, according to figures presented by Township Auditor Michael Cesaro. This year, the township will have an authorized debt of almost $15.2 million for open space preservation, conservation and use. At the meeting, resident Gerald Nathanson pleaded for an increase in the tax monies for farmland preservation. "Spending pennies now to save dollars later is good economic business," he said. Township Attorney Granville Michael Magee said the governing body could not simply increase the open space tax. He said the matter would have to be placed before voters in a referendum. Mayor Stephen Fleischacker said the committee could put together an open space referendum question by August to be put on the November ballot. He said he is interested in hearing from the community about what kind of increase they would like to see in the open space tax. Committeeman David Reed said he agrees with increasing the open space tax. "The more we purchase through tax, the better off we are," he said. Reed said landowners must be willing to put their property into preservation. He said a lot of landowners put in applications to preserve farmland but actually have no intention of going into the program. "They're just testing the waters," he said. Magee said that most people who put property into the farmland preservation program want to give something back to the community. He said preservation money cannot compete with money offered by developers. He said the township has been very aggressively seeking out landowners who are looking to sell their land and negotiating with them. "Not all properties are going into development without the township making their pitch," he said. Township Administrator Barbara Bascom, whom Deputy Mayor William Miscoski praised for her work with landowners to preserve farmland, said the township just held an outreach program explaining the tax benefits of preservation. "There is no shortage of applicants at the present time," she said. Fleischacker said landowners in the township are quite sophisticated, and realize there is more stability in farmland and open space preservation than in some types of development. Lori Horsnall Mount, a Republican candidate for the Township Committee, said she hopes the township is first preserving those properties that really need to be preserved. Bascom said the township does have a ranking system for farmland preservation. Committeeman Robert Faber said larger parcels should be looked at first. What drives land prices up, he said, is the 35 percent bonus density for cluster development that the township offers. Although Fleischacker had said at an April meeting that he would make a recommendation to the Planning Board to eliminate the 35 percent bonus density cluster option from the township's master plan, he was not present at the subsequent Planning Board meeting and the issue was not raised. Reed agreed that the township should go after bigger parcels rather than small properties that would only produce a few houses if developed. Resident Richard Messner asked if the township could adopt a Right of First Refusal, which would give the township the opportunity to purchase farmland first before a landowner could sell it to be developed. "It could be beneficial in the long run," he said. Committeeman Stephen Alexander said the governing body extensively discussed the Right of First Refusal and that former mayor Richard Osborn has also talked about the concept a number of times. As to the Right of First Refusal, Fleischacker said the township tries to leverage its money against state and county monies, but the State Agricultural Development Committee (SADC), the agency in charge of farmland preservation, will only agree to meet certified market values for property. "There is not enough money to pay more than certified market values in competition with developers," he said. Miscoski said the committee had once calculated it would need $368 million to outright buy all of the available farmland in the township. Fleischacker said the town should look at buying development rights, not outright purchasing land in a fee simple arrangement. Miscoski, Reed and Faber have land that has been put into either farmland or open space preservation.