As the debate builds about the Board of Education’s Bancroft referendum, most voters would share the opinion that if it passes, the lower the property tax impact, the better.
Toward this end, Haddonfield open space advocates and borough consultants identified grant sources for Bancroft land, and voters set the stage for Haddonfield to be well positioned for grants when they passed the local Open Space Trust Fund in 2006 and renewed it in 2011.
I’d like to remind residents of the much larger Camden County Open Space Tax that Haddonfield has paid since its inception in 1998, without having received a single open space preservation grant. The recent borough announcement of a likely $3.5 million (at a minimum) in grants towards Bancroft include $800,000 from the Camden County Open Space Preservation Fund. This is a start. However, Haddonfield’s contributions via the Camden County Open Space Tax as of 2012 total nearly $3.5 million, with over $400,000 annually paid into this fund currently.
If the referendum passes, by the time Bancroft moves in three years, Haddonfield property owners will have paid nearly $4.8 million. Camden County has made open space preservation grants of over $6 million to Voorhees, $7 million to Cherry Hill, and nearly $9 million to Winslow.
Before the Jan. 22 referendum vote, let’s hope we have the maximum return on our support, via our local, county and state taxes, of these various open space funds, particularly from the Camden County Open Space Preservation Fund.
Let’s also hope for full community representation on decisions about uses, since all Haddonfield taxpayers have donated many millions, over many years, to open space funding.
Mary Fagan
