Farmland Information Center, 2016
“Cost of Community Services (COCS) studies are a case study approach used to determine the fiscal contribution of existing local land uses. COCS studies conducted over the last 30 years show working lands generate more public revenues than they receive back in public services. Their impact on community coffers is similar to that of other commercial and industrial land uses. On average, because residential land uses do not cover their costs, they must be subsidized by other community land uses. Converting agricultural land to residential land use should not be seen as a way to balance local budgets…”
This resource from the Land Trust Alliance was provided by Robert Beach (Joshua’s Trust) and Ailla Wasstrom-Evans (Land Trust Alliance) at the 2023 Connecticut Land Conservation Conference. Their workshop How Stewardship and Enforcement Inform Transactions focused on transactional considerations informed by local and national trends in easement interpretation and enforcement.
Alexey Kalinin, Katharine Sims, Spencer R. Meyer, and Jonathan R. Thompson, 2022
“Our research assessed the impacts of new land protection on local property tax rates in more than 1400 municipalities in New England between 1990 and 2015. Average impacts on tax rates were small: the average area of new protection of 85 acres was associated with an increase in a homeowner’s annual tax bill of $0.72 per $100,000 of property value…”
4/21/21 – Attorney Keith Ainsworth leads the discussion on the legal strategies and tools available to land trusts, environmental organizations and landowners seeking to protect, assert and know their rights. This workshop will cover laws and regulations, and will review the broad history of cases that illustrate how Connecticut’s courts have shaped the law. Topics included encroachments, tree law, water and wetlands, liability and risk management, restoration, documentation and participating in the public process. Keith will provide a lightning round presentation on these topics and then open it up to the group for Q&A.
This workshop was originally presented as part of CLCC’s Spring 2021 Conserving Land by Staying Connected Programming.
9/30/20 – Keith Ainsworth leads the discussion on the legal strategies and tools available to land trusts, environmental organizations and landowners seeking to protect, assert and know their rights. This workshop covered laws, regulations, and review the broad history of cases that illustrate how Connecticut’s courts have shaped the law. Topics included encroachments, tree law, water and wetlands, liability and risk management, restoration, documentation and participating in the public process.
In 2017, CLCC requested assistance from graduate students in the Yale Forestry and Environmental Studies (FES) Strategies for Land Conservation course to better understand whether CT municipal assessors are routinely taking into account the impact of a conservation easement (CE) when determining a property’s valuation.