SHELBURNE — Town officials, with help from a Franklin Regional Council of Governments planner, have been honing in on strategies they can use to educate Shelburne residents about the Community Preservation Act (CPA) in advance of a town vote on whether to adopt it.
When adopting the Community Preservation Act, a town agrees to add a surcharge of up to 3 percent on local property taxes. The surcharge funding from each town involved with the CPA is combined with funds from the statewide Community Preservation Trust Fund, which is made up of recording fees from registries of deeds. Money in the fund is then used to support the four CPA categories across the state: open space protection, historic preservation, affordable housing and outdoor recreation.
In Shelburne, the conversation about potentially adopting the Community Preservation Act began in the spring. Members of several town boards and committees — including the Open Space Committee, Recreation Committee, Selectboard, Planning Board and Finance Committee — have been meeting with FRCOG Senior Planner, Alyssa Larose to determine strategies that could be used to educate residents about the act itself.
If Shelburne were to adopt the Community Preservation Act, it would be the ninth town in Franklin County to do so, per the Community Preservation Act’s website.
“I’ve been meeting with them now since the spring to talk about some potential outreach strategies and how to go about having these discussions with the town,” Larose said. “My job is really to help them through the process of exploring it, and exploring the different options.”
The distribution amount a town receives from the Community Preservation Trust Fund supporting the four categories of projects depends on how high the town’s surcharge rate is. The more money a town agrees to give through its surcharge rate, according to Larose, the greater the chance it has to receive a high matching rate from the state. A town that agrees to the maximum 3 percent surcharge rate, for example, would receive more funding from the state for CPA projects than a town that agrees to only ½ percent.
“The large reason (towns implement CPA) is it gives you a discretionary source of funding both from your own taxation and the matching funds that you can apply to projects,” Shelburne Selectboard member Andrew Baker explained. “Everybody is paying those fees into this pot, whether or not they’ve adopted CPA into their town.”
The proposal to adopt the Community Preservation Act will most likely be present on the warrant for the next Town Meeting. If it is passed there, it will get placed on the town election ballot, Baker said. If Shelburne adopts the CPA, a committee would be created to field project proposals, and ultimately send the accepted proposals to Town Meetings for voters to decide.
The conversation is ongoing, Baker said, as this possibility is in the early stages of planning. Reaching and educating voters is town officials’ main concern at this time.
“We’re at the beginning of the process. We’re looking around for insights and wisdom from towns that have adopted CPA ahead of us,” he said. “We have some good nearby towns that we can learn from.”
To learn more about the Community Preservation Act, visit communitypreservation.org/about.