If you believe it is important to save some open space and farmland in Lower Macungie before its all gone, would you be willing to pay $50-$100 more in real estate taxes or earned income tax to begin preserving this most valuable public asset ? For the cost of a few pizzas a year, this township could save hundreds, maybe even thousands of acres of choice open space and farmland. This could be done with a public referendum vote if a majority of voters would vote for such a minor a tax increase. The money raised, a million dollars a year or more, would be used to buy development rights from landowners willing to sell them. Once a landowners sells development rights, the land gets a deed restriction preventing it from being developed. The landowner ends up with a pile of money but still owns the land, which remains private and not open to the public, But the land can never be developed and its sweeping green beauty will be enjoyed by residents forever. If open space and farmland is not preserved, it will sooner or later be developed because that is its highest market value. A community must be willing to enter the marketplace with its collective pocketbook (taxes) and buy up the development rights of this land or it will be lost to the bulldozer. It may take fifty or a hundred years, but all open land that can be developed will be developed if it isnt saved. Dont we owe it to future generations to save some of our verdant land for their enjoyment ? Or do we bequeath them just another congested, overpopulated township of smothering sprawl ?
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 02:37:11 +0000
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