by Dan Donahue

Can we all agree that none of us look forward to paying our property taxes each year? Despite our great appreciation for the town government’s delivery of services, it always feels a little bit better when that excellence can be maintained without a tax increase. So it is understandable that property tax relief is one of the more popular topics to come up for debate during community planning efforts such as the municipal plans of conservation and development (POCD) that are mandated by the State of Connecticut (Ashford’s POCD is due for renewal in 2025). 

The debate about how to restrain property taxes is often dominated by a binary choice – residential vs. commercial development. It is generally understood that new residential development tends to increase taxes over time, due largely to its effect on school budgets. On the other hand, new commercial development is often seen as a way to reduce residential property taxes. 

So it follows that a commonly proposed strategy for restraining residential property taxes is to promote and approve more commercial and industrial development. 

While this calculation may work in some urban and suburban communities, it doesn’t do justice to the community values of rural places like Ashford, especially those places that are serious about maintaining their rural character. This residential vs. commercial development debate fundamentally fails to recognize and account for the important contribution farms and forests make to moderating town budgets and keeping expenses low.

American Farmland Trust (AFT) recognized this problem in the 1980s, establishing a new way for communities to analyze the value of their farms and forests on an equal basis with residential and commercial land uses. The result was the Cost of Community Services study (COCS). Dozens of these studies have since been done, a number of them right here in Connecticut. A proposed COCS study for Ashford was one of the action items listed in the 2005 POCD. In general these studies have found that a) residential land use does frequently cost a town more in services then is returned in taxes and b) that commercial and industrial land uses tend to generate more in taxes than they receive in services. But perhaps most interesting to those living in rural communities is that farms, forests and other “open spaces” also cost less to service than they generate in taxes. Although these undeveloped lands don’t generate a lot of tax revenue, they frequently cost the town next to nothing in direct service expenses. Follow this link to learn more about this planning tool from American Farmland Trust:

https://farmlandinfo.org/publications/cost-of-community-services-studies/

If a Connecticut town had discovered a way to reduce property taxes by developing more land for commercial or industrial uses, we would surely know about it. There is no right answer or perfect land use for all situations. The challenge for all communities is to strike a balance of residential, commercial and open space land that is right for them. The added challenge for a place like Ashford is to seek and develop this balance while maintaining its rural identity. As Ashford begins to prepare for the next chapter in its community planning history, it will be helpful to understand the relationships among land use, cost of public services and tax rates.