I disagree with Nancy Rauch Douzinas’ article in last week's Long Islander touting the findings of the Rauch Foundation’s ‘Trust for Public Land’ report.
Lumping the economic impact of parks and open space purchases together is an attempt to conceal the fact that open space purchases alone generate absolutely no income because “…the land is not publicly accessible.” All the value it seems comes from higher home assessments, which result in higher property taxes. So, if I understand this correctly, we need to spend more taxpayer money so we can generate more taxpayer money?Somewhere a group of politicians and wealthy donors are having a real good time with this one.
Ignoring the basic tenants of supply and demand, as well as cause and effect, will no doubt come to haunt the Rauch Foundation and the rest of Long Island in the end if we were to follow the report’s recommendations.
You cannot limit the supply of land to build on and expect home prices to come down.
And you cannot increase ‘affordable housing’ without changing the character of Long Island.
Using the government to protect open space from…the government is the sort of ‘pretzel logic’ we’ve come to expect from the environmentalist, Smart Growth crowd.
So, until someone in local government takes a better look at these gravity defying assumptions we had better hold on to our money because there ‘ain’t much left.’
