Right now, 12 Essex County towns have an open space trust fund. When Verona voters go to the poll on November 5, they will see a ballot question asking them to add Verona to that group.
An open space trust fund is money that a governing body collects from taxpayers and uses to either buy property to prevent it from being developed or to fund the maintenance of existing open space. The ballot question will establish a tax of two cents per $100 of assessed valuation on all Verona properties, which will mean an additional $86 in annual taxes on a house assessed at $430,000, which is the average assessment in Verona. The proposed tax, which would be less than what is charged in some other Essex County towns, would raise about $420,000 annually and the money could only be used for open space purposes. If the question passes, the Council would appoint Verona residents to an Open Space Trust Fund Advisory Committee that will make spending recommendations to the Council.
The Council first floated the idea of an open space trust fund back in February and the ballot question was approved by the outgoing Council before the new Council took office this summer. The fund could be used to purchase open space and to do improvements on existing open space, like Verona’s turf fields, both municipal and school. The turf Centennial Field is nearing the end of its useful life, and replacing it could cost as much as $500,000. The Council does not now have other sources of funds to do that because the money being generated by the payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) agreement on the Highlands at Hilltop apartment is only now enough to cover the debt service on the Freedom and Liberty youth sports fields behind the Verona Community Center.
Undeveloped property is what most people think of when they hear the term open space, but the definitions used in New Jersey also allow sports fields–even those that are turfed–to count as open space since they are used for recreation.
Verona doesn’t have a lot of undeveloped open space any more. According to the open space presentation on the municipal website, Verona currently has about 23.9 acres of open space registered with the state. This includes both Everett Field and Veteran’s Field on Linn Drive, as well as the trails behind F.N. Brown school along the Peckman River and almost 13 acres of the Hilltop Reservation. A list provided to MyVeronaNJ.com by Matthew Laracy, the municipal finance officer, earlier this year showed 68 pieces of vacant property in private hands, but some, like 58 Durrell Street, have been built on since then. The town says, in its presentation, that these are privately owned properties and vary in size from approximately 15 acres to one half an acre. It also says that are some partially developed properties that could be purchased and deconstructed to become open space.
Most of the open space in Verona is owned by Essex County, not our municipal government or private landowners. That includes the rest of the Hilltop Reservation, the 54 acres of Verona Park and 46 acres of Eagle Rock reservation that are within Verona’s borders, as well as 8.25 acres at Kip’s Castle park and six acres along the West Essex trail. Essex County has its own open space trust fund, also funded by taxpayers, which it has used for work at Turtle Back Zoo and South Mountain Reservation, among other projects. The state’s equivalent of an open space trust fund is the Green Acres program.
At the Town Council candidates forum earlier this year, Councilman Alex Roman said that the undeveloped land that is left in Verona used to be thought of as beyond the interest of developers because much of it was steeply sloped. Verona approved an ordinance in April 2016 to limit development on steep slopes, but Verona’s attractiveness to home buyers means that even that may not be enough. “We are a victim of our own success,” Roman said at the forum. “The town is so desirable to live in that it is worth it for people to try to develop these properties.”
An open space trust fund could enable Verona to buy land that comes on the market, but we might have to save up for a few years to afford the larger properties. Last December, the Council spent $2.85 million to buy the site of the former Cameco food processing plant, which is about 2.3 acres.
