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December 17, 2009

Bill could beef up CPA cash

State would match funds set aside for preservation

By Alan Burke

A bill now under consideration on Beacon Hill could provide a revenue boom for the cities and towns participating in the Community Preservation Act. The proposed measure could make permanent a substantial match to the funds those municipalities set aside for their community preservation committees.

"To me it's a terrific thing to do," Peabody Mayor Michael Bonfanti said. His city is the largest municipality on the North Shore to have signed onto the program. "(The CPA) has enabled us to do good things."

"As a Middleton person," said Kosta Prentakis, who heads that town's community preservation committee, "I think the bill is great."

Other communities on board include Boxford, Hamilton, Wenham and Manchester.

The bill is sponsored by the nonprofit Community Preservation Coalition.

"We're promoting it really aggressively," the group's associate director, Katherine Roth, said. While she declined to handicap its chances, she noted a large number of legislators are co-sponsoring the measure.

"It will be a little bit of a local stimulus," Roth predicted. "Like the federal stimulus." CPA-friendly communities are among the few where building is going on, she said.

Despite such testimonials, the Community Preservation Act has always had its detractors. Passed in 2000, the measure requires the cities and towns that vote to participate to set aside up to 3 percent of their real estate tax revenues for specific projects, including the purchase of open spaces, affordable housing and historic preservation.

But if the real estate tax was the foul-tasting medicine, a 100 percent match from the state-mandated trust fund was the spoonful of sugar that helped it go down. The money comes from fees collected at the various registries of deeds.

The 100 percent match was in the beginning. A combination of economic hardship and the steady increase in the number of communities participating — about 40 percent statewide — saw the trust fund increasingly hard-pressed to provide its match.

Last year, for example, it slipped to 35 percent in some communities.

The figure currently under consideration, according to Bill Power, chairman of Peabody's CPC, is 75 percent. It would mean a considerable amount of money in the Tanner City, which this past year raised more than $600,000 from 1 percent of its real estate tax and took in more than $200,000 from the trust fund.

"We're just thrilled to get anything," Power said, adding that he always expected the state-mandated match to drop as more and more communities signed on.

"My local aid was cut," Bonfanti said. "And this is a form of local aid, too."

In Peabody, the money has paid for the purchase of open spaces, including a farm. Such purchases have been aimed at putting some brakes on what had seemed to some out-of-control development. Likewise, some of the city's historic past has been preserved and low-income housing provided.

In Middleton, Prentakis, a selectman, said the town was able to expand its common by purchasing an abutting piece of land. Moreover, renovations at the library are happening thanks to the CPA. Last year, the town raised roughly $145,000 on 1 percent and took in $50,000 from the state.

Such sums, however, do not materialize from the ether. Up to now, the state match has come from fees paid at the Registry of Deeds. Prentakis expects the cost of registrations to go up if the proposal, now before the House Ways and Means Committee, passes.

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