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Region´s Voters Clamor for Open Space
In November, resounding majorities of East Coast voters approved ballot measures that, one way or another, will help states and local communities preserve open space and inhibit sprawl. In Georgia an open space initiative fell victim to vigorous opposition from real estate interests. In many other states along the seaboard, however, similar measures sailed through, with voters rejecting not the idea of growth, but the disorderly nature of much of it. Some highlights:
- By an overall 59 to 41%, reported the Cape Cod Times, all 15 towns on Cape Cod in Massachusetts approved an initiative to create a land bank and fund it via a 3% surcharge on local property taxes.
- By a two-to-one margin, Rhode Islanders voted $15 million in environmental bonds for bike paths and parks and to protect forests.
- In Suffolk County at the eastern end of Long Island, NY, a $62 million bond issue to preserve farmland and acquire open space was overwhelmingly approved. All five towns at the county's eastern end, moreover, voted separately for a 2% real estate transfer tax expected to generate $10 million a year for open space purchases.
- In New Jersey, Governor Christine Todd Whitman's $1 billion measure to protect half the state's remaining undeveloped land won an easy victory. Said The Times in Trenton: "On every level—state, county, and in most communities—ballot questions were approved that created or increased taxes designated to save open space and farmland from the threat of sprawling development."
- A whopping 72.3% of Florida voters said "Yes" to a proposed change in the state constitution favoring the conservation of natural resources.
In ways other than ballot initiatives, Atlantic Coast voters expressed similar sentiments. In Maryland, Governor Parris N. Glendening was re-elected after a tough battle against a conservative Republican opponent, Ellen Sauerbrey. Glendening is nationally known for his Smart Growth and Rural Legacy programs, against which Sauerbrey campaigned only half-heartedly. In Southern Maryland's fast-growing St. Mary's County, voters echoed statewide sentiment by tossing out of office the county commission members who had been especially insensitive to sprawl considerations.
According to consultant Phyllis Myers, who has been studying such trends for more than a decade, a prosperous economy helps. But even in tougher times earlier in the 1990s, surveys were indicating rising voter discontent with the inconvenience and rising cost of sprawl. Long Islanders polled in 1994 complained of there being "too much shopping" nearby; 800 people surveyed in Maryland the following year showed solid support for the kinds of programs that Glendening later put into place.
With such clear evidence of bipartisan leadership and mounting rank-and-file support for such local efforts, some observers began wondering when the other shoe would drop. Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, raised the question in a New York Times op-ed piece:
"The profusion of state and local initiatives underscores the importance of bringing the federal government into the fold." Many politicians, he argued, had joined developers and highway engineers in assuming that "the public would accept the inevitability of sprawl." But, he added, the most recent round of voting "sends a new message." |
