Pine Barrens Society says 'Failure' is the only option for Long

Long Island Business News, Apr 20, 2007 by Ambrose Clancy

The time/space continuum for Long Island has been narrowed to eight years and 35,000 acres.

So says the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, which released a Doomsday report on Thursday titled "On Course for Failure," a blunt warning that if land preservation is to succeed, it must be accomplished by 2015 - at a cost of $3.2 billion.

This prediction and its staggering cost were first aired last year at the "Long Island's Last Stand" conference organized by The Nature Conservancy, which identified 70,000 acres of open acreage remaining on the Island. The Society's 67-page report, six months in the making, includes a detailed analysis of the history of Long Island land preservation and a plan to fund the Island's last open space push. PBS Executive Director Dick Amper calls it "an endgame plan."

The ambitious proposal - which Amper compared to "an Apollo project to the moon" - seeks to preserve 25,000 acres of open space and 10,000 acres of farmland, roughly half of the Island's remaining undeveloped space. It's a "split the baby deal," Amper said, leaving half of the 70,000 acres to developers.

For it to work - to come up with the necessary $3.2 billion - all stars must be aligned on the county, state and town levels. Two- thirds of the proposed funding will come from existing programs, according to the PBS report.

Last November, the five East End towns extended to 2030 a real estate transfer tax called the Community Preservation Fund, which banks money for land acquisition and is expected to generate $1.2 billion by then. The CPF is a 2 percent real estate transfer tax on new home purchases over $250,000 - if a $300,000 home is bought, $50,000 is subject to the tax, generating $1,000 for open space preservation.

The PBS has asked Brookhaven Town, which has a rocky CPF history, to place a new CPF on the November ballot.

The PBS plan calls for money to be borrowed against projected CPF revenue to pay for open space purchases, and from 2015 to 2030 transfer tax revenues will be used to pay debt service.

Suffolk County imposes a quarter-penny sales tax partly to fund open space purchases, but the tax sunsets in 2013. The plan suggests extending it to 2020, thereby generating another $480 million.

Nassau County's contribution to the PBS project, according to the plan, is to float a $100 million bond act. Meanwhile, the plan calls on the state to give more money to Long Island from its Environmental Protection Fund, and also to put a $2 billion statewide bond act before voters.

Players in both public and private camps have reacted to the PBS report with comments ranging from a wait-and-see to deep skepticism. Robert Wieboldt, executive vice president of the Long Island Builders Institute, said the plan's cost might be prohibitive.

"A billion dollars?" Wieboldt said. "I don't think the voters or anyone else is going to approve that kind of expenditure."

Herb Agin, chief executive of Lake Success corporate real estate service Sutton & Edwards, said there will always be extremists on both sides, but cooperation on the PBS plan could be good for Long Island.

"For Long Island to grow, we need ratables," Agin said. "If we don't have that, we don't have the services that keep Long Island a premier community."

Wieboldt was recently appointed to a Brookhaven Town advisory committee set up by Supervisor Brian Foley, who wants to measure the town's chances of passing a CPF. In 2003, a Bookhaven CPF went down in flames literally hours before the November election, when a state Supreme Court judge called the language in the proposed law ambiguous. The town refused to appeal that decision because officials knew they didn't have the votes to pass it, and the proposal was removed from the ballot.

Wieboldt was one of the development and real estate leaders who worked to kill that CPF. This time around, he said, "we've made counterproposals and we're negotiating" on the details of a new Brookhaven CPF.

Nassau County's point man on open space, Director of Environmental Coordin-ation Tom Maher, said even though county voters approved a $50 million bond in 2004 and a $100 million bond last year, a new bond act "is doable - but not his year." Nothing is planned, he added.

As for extending Suffolk's quarter-penny tax, County Executive Steve Levy and County Legislature Minority Leader Daniel Losquadro, R-Miller Place, said it's possible - although both have concerns about how the pie will be cut.

The PBS wants half of the tax revenue to go to open space funding and half to assist property tax relief. But both Levy and Losquadro noted a third current component, the stabilization of sewer taxes. Levy was adamant about keeping this in play, "not only to prevent rate shock but for environmental purposes."

Governor Elliot Spitzer's office did not return calls for comment.

According to Amper, the PBS plan also calls for a "central clearing house" to systematically monitor land-preservation efforts.

If the 35,000 acres are to be saved, the wheels need to go in motion now, according to Amper and the "Last Stand" report. Both target 2015 as Long Island's build-out date; after that, activists note, it will be too late, and "current preservation is inadequate," Amper said, "in the face of aggressive development."