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Community Corner

Open Space Funding in Jeopardy Contact Morris Freeholders.

Tax cuts in the wrong places; tax exempt status goes unchallenged in other areas, for example millionaires tax; corporate loop holes.

  News Article February 2014, the freeholders on Wednesday night approved a 2014 open-space tax levy of $8.8 million, a reduction of $1.6 million from last year’s $10.4 million. The board voted 6-1 to adopt the plan. Freeholder Hank Lyon, who preferred a larger reduction of one-quarter of 1 cent, opposed the proposal. Deena Leary, the county’s planning and public works director, said the county still has $57 million left in the open space fund, formally known as the Preservation Trust Fund, which pays for open space purchases, farmland preservation, historic preservation and flood mitigation.

  What we have here is a breach of the public trust by our Freeholders. Do they really believe these low amounts of taxes to begin with need to be cut from a program that has unanimous support from the public, unanimous for well over 30 years? $57 millions “still left” in the open space fund.? Some person in the lottery can hit for more than this. Is it really worth looking to cut taxes in an area like this? The amount is so small and the benefit so great. We do not need nor require such meddling in our public trust treasure. This tax was overwhelming advocated for by the public and for good reasons, involving quality of life and community integrity. Without these open space funds, which if anything are not enough we stand to lose our remaining undeveloped landscapes to private forces which do not realize nature is not boundless and will allow no or not enough human constraints on land use development.

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  Morris County especially with its vast water resources, including ground water recharge areas will be vulnerable to more sprawl type development, which now blights the landscapes, developed office complexes, shopping mauls, industrial sites all vacant many abandoned.

  In the present state of our human progress we show a lack of a sense of evolving to where a realization should show we have reached a limit on market real estate type land use. Land is a resource not a commodity. We are better off with trees and undeveloped landscapes, these “natural resource assets"already work for us without investments providing clean, water, air and enhancing beauty to communities.

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  Who are these forces that are pushing back the open space funding? These forces would have us continue the same unneeded land development for short term economic benefits for a proven uneconomic economy. We have created a monster with our unsound ideas concerning land use. Our present infrastructure cannot be supported or maintained. Our sewers or clogged, our landscapes littered, our water supplies diminished and polluted from impervious surface and storm run-off. Morris County need not cut-back on their budget using Open Space tax.

 Here in Parsippany we have already suffered without proper thought or debate a breach of our public trust, when the Town Council without the consensualism of the public took our open space tax and now use it to balance the budget or whatever;all this because of the Governors 2-% tax cap. If all we have left for an economy is continued development of our American Landscapes and the spread of corporate values, we are no longer real Americans,losing our covenant with the land we fall into further decay morally and physically.

  Let the Morris County Freeholders Know. Leave our Open Space Tax in place. We cannot afford any more unwise improper land development schemes for short term profits to the few. As a people we are suffering from a loss of Land Ethic. Land should be a common denominator in uniting us as a people. Our remaining lands should not fall to private sources. 

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