Willing to pay a premium to own in Warwick

To the editor: Several letters have recently appeared in your paper opposing the Community Preservation Fund on the grounds that it will negatively impact on home prices, that potential home buyers will not be willing to pay a premium to live in Warwick. It’s a fair objection and deserves to be addressed with facts. Warwick residents voted to create a Purchase of Development Rights program in 2000 and have been paying for this program through property taxes since then. Yet homes in Warwick in 2006 sell on average for 60 percent more than they did in 2002. I’m told during this period the value of existing homes has on average increased by $65,000. Is this not enough profit? Has anyone ever decided not to move to Warwick because of the cost of PDR, or even asked about it before their closing? I do not know, but I doubt it, and I do know people who moved to Warwick specifically because of its open spaces and are glad we are protecting them. It is very likely that house values in Warwick will decline in the near term. If I were a Realtor, or someone planning to move shortly, I would be unhappy about this. The truth, though, is that this decline is a nationwide issue of supply and demand, and will have little or nothing to do with the Community Preservation Fund. Nor is it likely that this decline will be anything close to the growth in home values that has occurred in recent years. People will continue to want to move to Warwick. Increasingly, they will do so because we have done more than other communities to preserve our environment, and I believe most people will accept the transfer tax as a one-time fee for contributing to that preservation. To quote the Boston Globe about a similar bill: “This is the most gentle of levies, imposed on most people only a few times in their lives and intended to preserve the environment, which enhances property values in the first place. More than a tax, it is an investment in livability.” The CPF will help us protect our water supply. It will help us have a say in development. It will help protect the beauty of our community. It will help us support our only major industry, agriculture. For those reasons, I would be willing to pay a premium to own property in Warwick and I think many others will as well. Bob McGrath Warwick