‘King George would be proud of what Albany has accomplished'

To the editor: My family has lived in Warwick for quite a number of years. Our children were born and raised here and now are in their middle 20’s, working their way toward the American Dream. During our lives here we have seen the beginnings and growth of suburban sprawl. Along with that has come the slow, steady reduction of the landscape’s diversity and beauty as traffic lights are installed and ancient trees along the roadside cut to make way for telephone poles and power lines. Evidently it is also “too expensive” to move utilities underground, even though we pay among the highest rates in the country. New roads are built with rights of way twice as wide as our charming country roads and old roads widened to meet standards set by “experts” in distant state and federal agencies trying to make one standard fit every situation. We agree with the goals of the Smart Growth Alliance, but have some suggestions on the means to their ends. I noted with interest the statistic that 16,000 farm acres contribute $87 million to the local economy. That comes to just over $5,400 per acre. Obviously peanuts compared to the value of land for development. How many years must the farmer work to equal the sale of his land to a developer? The figure given of $1.08 in municipal services required for each dollar paid by a homeowner, versus only $.43 for farmers means that farmers astonishingly bear the burden of subsidizing the homeowners! By the way, I am a homeowner, one of the beneficiaries of this structure, neither a developer nor a farmer seeking to help myself or any of my family members. It just makes no sense to me to tax our own food supply. It is obvious from the farm bankruptcies and regularly occurring demise of agribusinesses in our region how difficult it is to make a living that way. As happens all too often in our tax hungry state, the solution proposed is another tax. It’s deplorable that the state has proliferated and raised the fees charged to take practically any action, and tacked on surcharges rather than face the scrutiny of the voters by raising taxes in open debate. King George would be proud of what Albany has accomplished in the last several years! As just one example, the mortgage transfer tax has already risen about 1,000 percent since we moved here in the 70’s. Why should anyone be required to pay a tax to take a mortgage or worse yet, simply refinance? To add another transfer tax just because a real estate sale is made is a flawed approach, while making it sound like it will only burden the buyer is condescending. In my opinion, 0.75 percent is not going to materially affect real estate sales, but it’s not going to make a meaningful difference in development, either. Let’s suppose that the fees are raised high enough in the future to purchase enough meaningful tracts. Will that really help if those islands of natural beauty and bucolic farms are surrounded by vast, cookie cutter residential developments, shopping malls surrounded by asphalt and four lane roads with traffic lights at every entrance and intersection to control and “protect” the resulting traffic from collisions? I would like to see a two-fold alternative. The farmers’ property tax burden should be drastically reduced. Better yet, eliminate them altogether. Less farmers would be driven to sell out and they would be more competitive. It has to be tough enough competing with states like California when the growing season is so much shorter here. Rather than create another stream of income for the town which has to be documented, collected, accounted for etc., it would be simpler and more efficient to raise an existing tax. However, it only gets my vote IF at least 95 percent of the additional taxes goes to the intended purpose. I’m happy to have the town keep five percent to defray its cost for collection and managing the investments in exchange for eliminating any chance the funds will be diverted. Sincerely, John R. Mickowski Warwick