8. SR 12-11-1995 - Laserfiche WebLink

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In a study of the fiscal impacts of major land uses in Culpeper County, Virginia, it was found that "for every dollar of revenue collected from residential land, $1.25 is spent on county services; or every do lar collected from industrial /com- mercial land, 19 cents is spent on services; simi- larly, for every dollar collected from farm /forest/ open space, 19 cents is spent services." Farm/ torest /open space generates revenues of $1.9 mil- lion and expenditures of $350,000. Even with the deferral for current -use taxation, farm /forest/ open space land provides a net tax benefit to the county (Vance and Larson, 1988). In a study of development in DuPage County, Illinois, it was found that new growth, both resi- dential and nonresidential, resulted in higher taxes. While most citizens and planners feel that nonres- idential development will improve the tax base, when looking at the long -term and regional im- pacts, nonresidential development had more than three times the impact on raising taxes of residen- tial development. The study showed that commer- cial and industrial development placed burdens on public infrastructure and services that were not being paid for by the increased value of the land (Bergman, 1991). In its study of Loudoun County, Virginia, the American Farmland Trust (1986) found that net public costs were approximately three times higher ($2,200 per dwelling) where the ensity was one unit per five acres, than where the density was 4.5 units per acre ($700 per dwelling). The report states: Relatively low- density residential development (one to five or more acres per dwelling unit) gen- erates higher net public costs primarily because it requires inefficient expenditures for public school operating, instructional, and transportation ser- vices, and also because it creates potentially higher public liabilities for road maintenance and future provision of public water and sewer services. Low- density residential subdivisions, usually located in rural areas, remove relatively large amounts of land from agricultural uses while re- quiring public services (education, health and wel- fare, public safety, etc.), which are similar on a per The Economics of Preserving Open Space 283 dwelling or per capita basis to those required by high density subdivisions that convert far less land from existing agricultural or other economic uses. The Costs of Sprawl, a study commissioned by the Council on Environmental Quality in the De- partment of Housing and Urban Development and the Environmental Protection Agency, found that "better planning and higher density result in lower economic, environmental, natural resource. and, to some extent, personal and social costs for a given number of welling units. Increased den- sity is less expensive in terms of total costs and even more so in terms of that portion of total costs typically borne by the government" (Real Estate Research Corporation, 1974). A recent review and evaluation of the literature conducted by the Urban Land Institute concluded that "development spread out at low densities in- creases the costs of NbRic facilities" (Frank, 1989). The book loos at the range -of-costs induced by sprawling development and suggests that houses built in such sprawl may cost from 40 to 400 per- cent more to service than comparable homes in more compactly designed subdivisions. THE VALUE OF OPEN SPACE Open space preservation produces multiple eco- nomic benefits: those to the community as a whole, those to individual landowners, and those to de- velopers. In terms of community benefits, open space preservation can produce far - reaching ef- fects on the local economy in its effect on the local "quality of life." According to an annual survey of chief executive officers conducted by Cushman and Wakefield in 1989 (NPS, 1990), quality of life for employees was the third most important fac- tor in locating a business. According to a 1988 re- port of the Governors' Committee on the Environ- ment (NPS, 1990), the governors of five New England states officially recognized open space as a key element in the quality of life that brought rapid economic growth and a multi - billion dollar tourism industry to the region. Through these studies we can see that "quality of life" has a tangible, economic value that can be