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…”
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…”
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.
