The Peconic Bay Community Preservation Fund (CPF), which would be extended from its now scheduled end in 2030 to 2050 pending acceptance of voters in the five East End towns in referenda to be held this year, has preserved stretches of open space and farmland in Riverhead and Southold and the rest of the East End.
The New York State Legislature and Governor Andrew Cuomo last month approved the extension of the CPF for 20 years, and also a provision allowing for use of 20 percent of the funds collected for water quality projects, also pending the outcome of the new referenda.
CPF has its origin in a program created on Nantucket by a native Long Islander. That’s something I didn’t know until I began researching the connection after a visit this summer to Nantucket, an island 30 miles out in the ocean off Cape Cod. By sailboat or, a good deal less adventurously, by ferry, I’ve been to most of the islands east of Long Island—Fisher’s Island and Plum Island, both parts of Southold Town, Block Island which is part of Rhode Island, Cuttyhunk and Martha’s Vineyard, both parts of Massachusetts.
But I’d never been to Nantucket. It is a beautiful place, and I was so impressed to hear on a bus tour that half of the lovely a 14-by-3.5 square mile island is preserved.
Much of that has to do with private land contributions and acquisitions involving several Nantucket conservation organizations, but most is because of the island’s two-percent real estate transfer tax. Vaguely, I recalled hearing at some point that the CPF on the East End—also based on a two-percent real estate transfer tax—had a Nantucket link.
Absolutely, State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who spearheaded the establishment of CPF, confirming this to me upon my return. The model for the program on the East End of Suffolk County is the one in Nantucket, he said.
Last year CPF reached a $1 billion mark in funds collected. The money has gone to acquire open space, development rights to save farmland, purchase of other environmentally sensitive land and for historic preservation purposes on the East End. At a time of declining or non-existent fiscal support for these purposes from other levels of government, CPF has made all the difference on the East End. “It’s clear that conservation could not have kept pace with development here without the CPF,” says Thiele of Sag Harbor.
How did he begin working—for many years—to make the CPF a reality?
That starts with Judith Hope. It was 1984 and Ms. Hope, then the East Hampton Town supervisor, had flown to Nantucket with her pilot husband Tom Twomey.
Twomey, who died last year, an attorney and senior partner of a Riverhead-based law firm, was an ardent environmentalist like Ms. Hope.
On Nantucket, Ms. Hope told me, she read about “this wonderful concept of a 2 percent transfer tax to preserve open space. “I brought it to the town board,” she related. And she also asked Thiele, attorney for the East Hampton Town Planning Board as well as town attorney of adjoining Southampton Town, to look into it.
Meanwhile, an East Hampton town board member, Randy Parsons, now with The Nature Conservancy of Long Island, had read, but here on Long Island, about the Nantucket program, too. “We discussed the program at a town board work session,” Parsons recollects. The board authorized his going to Nantucket with then two town officials, Peter Garnham and then East Hampton town planner Thomas Thorsen, to learn more about its program. Comments Parsons three decades later: “Without the CPF and a dedicated fund for preservation, we would have had a different outcome. So thank you, Nantucket!” On Nantucket, they met with its planning director, Bill Klein—the Long Island native who began the program there.
Now retired, Klein, who came from Syosset and is the nephew of former Suffolk County Executive John V.N. Klein, went to Nantucket to become its planner in 1974. “I was the first planner they ever hired,” Klein told me from his home now in Chicago (he also has kept a place on Nantucket).
Having grown up in Syosset in the 1950s, Klein saw western Long Island hit hard by development sprawl and had come to an early conclusion about the way Nassau County was developing: “This wasn’t working.”
He began focusing on planning, doing an internship at the Nassau County Planning Commission and, after receiving his bachelor’s degree at Colgate, went on to obtain a master’s degree in regional planning at Penn State.
Also informing his understanding of preservation was his relationship with Uncle John V. N. Klein, very much environmentally committed and creator of the Suffolk County Farmland Preservation Program launched in 1974. Based on the purchase of development rights from owners of farmland—the difference between what their land is worth as farmland and suburban subdivision—it was a first-in-the-nation concept. It has since been emulated across the U.S. John Klein was Suffolk County executive between 1972 and 1979.
Bill Klein recalls many family dinners with his Uncle John where “we’d chat about growth on Long Island” and what could be done to counter development sprawl. A central point was that “if you are really serious about preserving the rural character and guiding growth around existing villages, and stopping it cold elsewhere, you would have to strike out and do wild and crazy things.”
Klein before coming to Nantucket as its first planner at 27 had worked for five years as a planner in State College, Pennsylvania. There he learned about the half-to-one-percent real estate transfer tax in various localities in Pennsylvania used for general government revenue purposes.
With Nantucket on fire with development, “subdividing at a rate of 500 lots a year” when he arrived, he said, could a similar tax be created for the island but earmarked for preservation?
“There was really a kind of emergency going on,” he said of the development explosion. This is where he brought “wild and crazy” into the picture with the idea of a two-percent real estate transfer tax on Nantuckete to be paid by the buyer with proceeds dedicated to acquiring and preserving land—derived from the transfer tax Klein knew about in Pennsylvania.
But to bring the idea of a transfer tax to Nantucket was “a daunting task,” he said. A “consensus-building process” was launched that included, in 1982 a three-day symposium on Nantucket about what the island was “going to look like in 20 years.” Among those coming to Nantucket to speak at the symposium was John Klein.
A special law had to be passed by the Massachusetts Legislature. “Mike Dukakis was governor and he was strongly in favor,” Klein said. “One reason was that he and Kitty got married on Nantucket and he had a warm and fuzzy feeling about the island.” The tax was approved with “near unanimity” by voters on Nantucket. It took effect in 1984, the year Ms. Hope read about it on Nantucket and brought the concept back to Long Island.
A huge roadblock needing to be cleared, however, to get the tax approved here was getting approval in the New York State Assembly. “The statewide real estate lobby had come out against it in full force,” said Ms. Hope. “It was a long and difficult struggle.”
In 1998 the measure finally got to the Assembly floor and was passed. Leading advocacy for the measure in the Assembly were Assemblymen Thiele and Thomas DiNapoli (now state comptroller), a resident of Great Neck Plaza in Nassau County and then chair of the Assembly’s Environmental Conservation Committee.
It, meanwhile, passed the State Senate with Senator Kenneth LaValle of Port Jefferson its sponsor. Successful referenda were held thereafter in each of the five East End towns.
“All things came together at a magic moment,” said Ms. Hope. And the two-percent transfer tax “has had profound and beneficial consequences for eastern Long Island,” she added.
Taking effect in 1999, it has saved more than 10,000 acres so far. The Nantucket program, which has raised $286 million, has in addition to coming to East End, had versions adopted in places including Martha’s Vineyard, Block Island and Little Compton, Rhode Island.
Bill Klein says that through the years he has given “talks around the United States” about the plan. But “getting their legislators to commit” to the concept has been “mind-boggling.” Still, where it “has had application, it’s been dynamite.”
Senator LaValle comments that “the Community Preservation Fund is a mechanism that has enabled us to protect the East End’s environmental treasures. The CPF has been a tremendous success in preserving the lands and natural resources that are critically important for Long Island.”
Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. Grossman and his wife Janet live in Sag Harbor.
Suffolk Closeup is a syndicated opinion column on issues of concern to Suffolk County residents.
