Bad policy, bad politics

Our View
The Suburban Trends
Sunday, July 2, 2006

Call it déjà vu all over again concerning the recent call by Republicans in Ringwood to vote against any use of open space that doesn’t match “dollar for dollar” money spent on recreational improvements.

For those of us with good medium-term memories, West Milford’s Republicans ran a similar campaign last year, going so far as to put a public question on the ballot, hoping to divert open space fund monies toward the improvement of recreational facilities.

In Ringwood’s case last week they took advantage of the fact that Councilman Bill O’Hearn was absent from the meeting to sink a vote concerning buying the Falciglia property off Skyline Drive.

The local GOP’s contention that open space monies need to be matched dollar for dollar with those set for recreational improvements is poor public policy.

After all, year in and year out municipalities routinely budget for field improvements, recreation programs, and the like. Open space taxes were created to start a slush fund of sorts to allow municipalities to purchase properties in danger of development.

Possibly one of two things are happening here. One, the GOP is hoping to take a page from the West Milford GOP playbook and divide the recreation group from those who favor open space purchases in the next election. Or perhaps the Republicans are still buying into the chimerical chase of ratables in hopes that by nixing the sale, Falciglia’s development would go through.

We think the purchase of open space is almost always beneficial. Vacant land doesn’t tax services much. A retirement community like Falciglia’s looks good on paper, but could be the straw that breaks the emergency services back – not to mention stress out an already stressed out traffic situation on Skyline Drive. Moreover, an all weather sports field also sounds good until somewhere around a decade down the road the faux turf needs replacing.

There there’s the issue of addicting the recreation folk to dependency on open space monies. By tying the two together, the policy would likely create a local entitlement program for recreation. Whereas by keeping open space monies primarily for open space purchases, there is the potential once the Highlands Act plays out and development is severely curtailed, that the tax might one day go away.

Voters in West Milford wisely rejected the really bad open space fund policy last November. Let’s hope Ringwood’s Republicans change their tack also.