SOUTHWICK — Select Board member Jason Perron proposed adding an article to the May Town Meeting warrant that would lower the Community Preservation Act surcharge placed on residential property valuation from 3% to 1.5%.
“There’s a lot of talk about taxes and giving relief to people and I’ve been looking at different ways to do that, and one of the things I want to propose is reducing the CPC percentage down to 1.5%,” Perron said during the board’s meeting Monday night.
“This is something I would like to put in front of residents as a warrant article at Town Meeting,” he added.
He suggested dropping the surcharge by half for a few years before reinstating it to 3%.
The town has been a part of the state’s Community Preservation Act since 2002 and since then money generated using the 3% surcharge on residential property valuations has returned over $18 million for projects to preserve open space and historic sites, create affordable housing, and develop outdoor recreational facilities in town. Something that Select Board member Doug Moglin reminded Perron.
“Look at the number of projects in front of the CPA and what that would have been on the tax rate if we didn’t have the CPA,” he said.
Moglin also said there was an effort several years ago during Town Meeting (2016) to lower the surcharge that was “resoundingly defeated.”
Perron fired back: “I’m not afraid of being defeated.”
Since the town joined the program in 2002 it has used the highest surcharge allowed by the law, 3%, to participate.
Because the town has the highest allowable surcharge, it is eligible to receive three tranches of state funding each year based on the town’s collections. If the surcharge is below 3%, the state only awards one tranche of funding annually.
This is how the surcharge works.
For a property valued at $300,000, $100,000 is exempted. Multiply $200,000 by the current tax rate of $15.47 per every $1,000, and a property owner’s tax annual tax bill would be $3,094. That $3,094 is multiplied by the 3% surcharge, which adds $92.82 annually, or $7.73 monthly to the tax bill.
Perron’s point during the meeting was the explosion of real estate values over the last four or five years has made it difficult for property owners to keep up.
He said the current median value of a residential property in town is $435,000. Using that same formula with the 3% surcharge, homeowners would pay $155.45 annually, or $12.95 a month.
At 1.5%, the annual surcharge would be half of $155.45 or $77.73 annually.
Select Board member Diane Gale asked Perron if he “had run the numbers” on the effect on the average tax bill.
Perron said not really but based on his home’s value and some other people he’d spoken with, it would be “$400 or $500, give or take.”
She also asked Perron if he had let CPC Chair Christopher Pratt know about his proposal.
He said yes, but that “most people on the CPC are not gonna like to hear this.”
However, he stressed he didn’t want to get rid of the program.
“I don’t want to get rid of it, but I’d like to see it reduced,” he said.
Moglin said the better way to lower the amount property owners pay into the program is to increase the exemption.
Perron and Gale agreed, but that would take an act of the state Legislature.
“It’s time for the state to go back and look at that,” Perron said.
However, Moglin offered a warning to Perron about the proposal.
“Feel free to go ahead, but we have history as a guide.”
