| First, what is sprawl: Low density development on the edge of cities and towns, poorly planned, land consumptive, auto-dependent, and designed without respect to its surroundings. Unfortunately, this definition is increasingly becoming the norm for far too many of CT's towns.
The impacts of sprawl are numerous. From an environmental standpoint, sprawl destroys open space, farmland, and increases runoff from paved areas into our streams and river. Its reinforcement of a car-centric society also increases air pollution. From a social standpoint, studies have shown that sprawl has a detrimental impact on our health and socially isolates specific segments of our society, specifically the elderly, children, and the poor.
What causes spawl? Well, that is a complex question, but far from being the result of a free market system, urban sprawl is the direct consequence of government subsidies, intense corporate lobbying and manipulation through the legalized bribery we call campaign contributions, and stifling zoning regulations that have limited the choices Americans have when it comes to where we live and how we get from place to place.
In CT, it is also the direct result of Connecticut's property tax structure. In Connecticut we have connected our highest priority and fastest-growing expense in local budgets - public education - to the slowest-growing source of revenue - local property taxes. Connecticut's local public education system is more reliant on the local property tax than all other states in the union because the percentage of education funding coming from state revenues - 37 percent - is near the bottom (45th) among the states. As a result, the property tax burden in Connecticut is the third-highest in the nation per capita and ranks as the 11th-highest in the nation when it comes to the percentage of personal income going to property taxes. These "rules" are a prescription for strife, whether evident in failed local budget referendums, constrained educational investment, or intergenerational struggles over priorities.
Furthermore, Connecticut's property tax structure has created a competition among the 169 towns for property tax funds and has put pressure on local officials to build the grand list by commercially developing available land - the so-called fiscalization of land use - to offset the high cost of residential development they can do little to control. The result is urban sprawl, the loss of farmland and open space, increased traffic congestion, and a decline in the quality of life in far too many of our communities.
With the rules as they are, local officials are pretty much constrained as to what they can do about these budgetary and land-use problems. Local officials are almost forced to produce the results that citizens, frustrated by high taxes, improperly funded education programs and bad land-use decisions, find so aggravating.
I am in no way attempting to absolve local officials from blame. Far too many of our local elected officials continue to believe that we can grow our way out of our financial problems.
For example, the Shoppes at Farmington Valley was hailed as the economic savior of Canton, yet they are still unable to fully fund an education budget despite a 9 percent increase in their grand list. What is going to happen next year without such an increase? The fact is that they would have to build almost the equivalent of the Shoppes every year to offset just a 3 percent yearly increase in Canton's overall budget. If they are unable to control residential development, no amount of commercial development will be able to offset its impact on their budget.
Residential development attracts more commercial development which, in turn, attracts more residential development - it is just a vicious cycle. Property taxes, already some of the highest in the country, will simply continue to rise.
So what do we do? First, we need to acknowledge that the rules of the game are stacked against us. Whether you are for increased education budgets, lower property taxes, or the preservation of open space, we are all going to lose. Second, we need to pressure our elected state officials to change the rules. How the state funds local education needs to be completely overhauled. Simply put, the state needs to pay its fair share of local education expenditures.
It is imperative to increase the state's share to rectify the imbalance between state and local contributions to support local education. We should employ a diverse range of taxes with a broad base, with balance among income, sales, and property taxes. This means we should specifically avoid a heavy reliance on the local property tax, which hurts families and businesses, grows revenues slowly, and contributes to urban sprawl.
Someone once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If we don't change the rules of the game, we will continue to see the same fruitless results every spring come budget time and continue to watch the bucolic CT countryside get paved over. |
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