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Luxury no more
 Editorial (Kingston) Freeman on Ulster Co. Open Space Plan, 9/22/07


The draft Ulster County open space plan is being shopped around the county in a series of public information sessions.

The 100-page plan should get a good, hard, serious look from anyone concerned about the county's future. You can view it on the Internet at www.co.ulster.ny.us/planning/ospace.shtml

We look forward to studying the details of the plan.

But it's safe to say that, in this day and age, few locations in relatively developed areas of the East Coast can afford the luxury of being without an open space plan. And, frankly, Ulster County is behind the curve.

Our burgeoning population on the dynamic East Coast, once packed vertically into cities, now expands horizontally across the landscape, spreading and filling developable open spaces like ball bearings dumped from a coffee can onto a hardwood floor.

Thus, preserving open space is an imperative.

But it should not be confused with a mechanism for thwarting growth. Any open space plan should both preserve open space and simultaneously nurture growth where it belongs, as long as reasonable precautions are taken to make that growth sustainable.

No open space plan, no matter how comprehensive in inventorying natural resources or projecting needs or recommending best uses, is worth the paper it's written on if it doesn't provide a surefire mechanism for implementation.

That is, the actual safeguarding of open space.

This can happen primarily in one of two ways - through legal prohibition, such as in highly restrictive zoning, or by acquisition of development rights.

We prefer the latter. And that means you need money.

A democratic society ought to be prepared to share the burden of the public benefit of open space through the raising and expenditure of public funds. Private property owners ought not be expected to bear a burden of open space imposed by heavy-handed zoning restrictions.

Yet, the mighty open space plan now being shopped around the county defers the question of funding to yet another study group - what it calls the "Open Space Partnership." Too bad.

Other municipalities have plunged ahead on the funding issue to fill what already has been for too long a substantial county leadership vacuum on open space.

The towns of Gardiner, Marbletown and New Paltz for instance, have made commitments to open space by bonding for open space needs.

On the east side of the river, Dutchess County has bonded for open space and voters in the town of Red Hook have approved levying a local property transfer tax to create a dedicated funding stream for open space preservation.

Of the two mechanisms - bonding and a dedicated tax - we believe the latter is the best guarantor of ongoing funding for what will be an ongoing need. A dedicated tax, tied in some manner to property values, has the added advantage of increasing revenues during hot real estate markets when the pressure on open space - and the cost of preserving it - are greatest and reducing those revenues when the market cools.

The clock is ticking on open space and the county needs to act with some speed.