The Protection and Creation of Buffer Zones

In

Sherwood Forest:

Planning and Revenue Issues

Internal Discussion Paper SFNA/DP-04-01

February 23, 2004

 

            In the months ahead, Sherwood Forest and the Town of Becket, working in close conjunction with the SFNA Land Use Committee and the Sherwood Forest Environmental District, will need to confront a number of land use policy issues which have both environmental and revenue implications.  This discussion paper is intended as a springboard for our internal review and consideration of these issues.

            Several facts have been established, including:

            1.  Most of the undeveloped (or “unvested”) lots in Sherwood Forest do not meet current zoning requirements and can not legally be developed without significant merger.  The town has accepted this realization, has already classified some 70% of the lots as ineligible for building permits in their current configuration.

            2.  Even if these lots could be legally developed, the carrying capacity of Sherwood Forest, with its present density of waterfront homes; extensive rivers, lakes, wetlands, and watershed runoff courses; in itself prohibits such a level of development without polluting Sherwood Forest itself, its downstream watercourse which passes through protected areas, and possibly much of the surrounding area.

            3.  These factors alone make it imperative that sound land use planning, including environmental analysis and possibly limited re-zoning, be undertaken while we still have some control over the future growth and viability of the Forest.  The law supports this undertaking, sees the Community itself as the logical entity to spearhead that effort, and the Federal government has granted tax-exempt status to a companion entity created to mobilize resources and coordinate technical development associated with the planning process.

            4.  The Town’s recognition that some 700 lots in Sherwood Forest are now unbuildable has resulted in a reassessment of those lots which has revised their taxable value downward.  At the same time, increasing demand for property in Sherwood Forest has pushed the value of vested and buildable land upward; particularly waterfront properties.  While we have not yet determined whether that has shifted the percentage of the Becket tax burden to or from Sherwood Forest, it certainly has redistributed the tax burden within Sherwood Forest.

            5.  In concept, such a re-distribution is not unrealistic.  It reflects recognition that Sherwood Forest is a valuable asset, as well as an appreciation for the fact that preservation of the Forest’s home values and environment is in the interest of everyone including the Town of Becket.  This must, however, be contrasted with undisputed court filings that demonstrate that the Town of Becket has also contributed to the creation of attractive nuisances, pollution, lack of hazard mitigation, environmental degradation, attempts to convert to development the Forest’s historic buffer zones and limited green spaces, and other actions that are inconsistent with the interest of Sherwood Forest stakeholders and which expose the entire Town and all its residents to diminished municipal assets and unnecessary liability.  Eventually the Town of Becket must recognize that neither we nor the courts will accept this; particularly when Becket is, at the same time, characterizing Sherwood Forest as an “upscale” community and raising its taxes.

            6.  We have made every possible effort to work productively with the Town of Becket on these issues; and in fact have arrived at consensus with Town officials on a number of important and conceptually sophisticated potential solutions.  However, since a limited number of officials in the Town of Becket have continued to resist implementation of productive solutions, we have had no alternative but to work through the courts and the political process.  The courts have been supportive, and we have moved quickly and productively in the legal arena while also seeking at every turn to avoid litigation in favor of productive collaboration with the Town.  It has become evident, however, that Sherwood Forest must in any case become more politically active.

            7.  Sherwood Forest is a private community and therefore we must accept that it is we who will ultimately bear the responsibility for our own future.  While we have come to recognize and understand the need to protect the potential of our neighborhoods and environmental resources, we are only beginning to appreciate the associate costs.  Given the average length of roadways per lot, we share the equivalent of very long driveways.  We also share ownership of a very complex and extensive infrastructure which includes lakes and dams, and vast physical holdings which are both expensive to insure and subject to increasingly expensive regulatory oversight. 

            8.  The greater the ultimate density of the Forest’s development; the broader the potential revenue base to share the expenses which we can no longer avoid – assuming however that we assure a revenue structure that will require all beneficiaries to pay their share of the cost burden.  If the density becomes too great, however, we will pollute the Forest, destroy the value of our Community, undermine our real estate investments, and be left with the costs and none of the revenue potentials.

            9.  Also, if we fail to clean up the Forest and assure a rational plan for growth, we may be able to save our homes but nevertheless be left with development that is both chaotic and unnecessarily expensive to maintain.  For example, a very high percentage of the Forest’s roads are now paper streets.  It is in our interest to eventually discontinue streets that do not serve actual residents – thus reducing our cost liability and making our development pattern more rational.  The existing structure of the Road District does not incorporate this option.  That is only one of the challenges that representatives from both the Road District and the Association are now working together to address.

            10.  The Mission Statement of the Sherwood Forest Neighbors Association, Inc. contains a commitment to retain, protect, and preserve Sherwood Forest’s buffer zones.  Most of these buffer zones were created to meet legal requirements imposed before Sherwood Forest was even approved as a subdivision.  Most existing buffer zones are on the perimeter of the subdivision.  We need these to preserve the integrity of our Community; but we also need internal buffer zones.  Without adequate buffer zones and green space, we can not offset existing cluster density, much less rationally plan for future development.

            11. Working in conjunction with the tax-exempt Federal I.R.S. Section 501(c)(3) Sherwood Forest Environmental District, Inc.; approved by the Commonwealth to operate as a Land Bank, we can now support rational development planning by acquiring unbuildable land.  In addition we can encourage merger while providing options through which owners of existing now-unbuildable lots can move toward ownership of merged buildable lots.

            12.  In planning this land bank, however, we need some sense of our own planning direction.  One logical step is to create internal buffer zones in areas now served only by paper streets.  Figure 1 illustrates a theoretical example of such a buffer zone (it is theoretical only since no investigation has been made of the status of the lots now on this portion of the Subdivision Map).

 

 

 

Figure 1 – Potential Internal Buffer Zone

 

            Note the area encircled by the thick green line in the center of the map.  This area is now occupied by small non-conforming and undeveloped lots.  The streets going to these lots are presently paper streets.  The lot shown to the right of the area encircled by the green line is a larger lot which on the basis of size meets the zoning requirement for development.  It may, however, be either landlocked or lack sufficient frontage.

            Converting the area encircled by the thick green line into an internal buffer zone would accomplish two objectives.  First it would allow discontinuation of paper streets which now serve no purpose other than contributing to at least the potential expenses of the Road District.  Second, it would create a new Buffer Zone to complement other existing Buffer Zones shown in solid green elsewhere on the map.  These buffer zones together serve to offset the impact of existing dense and small-lot development.  Furthermore, as an example, a Land bank can provide an incentive to the owners of the lots now in the area encircled by the thick green line by allowing them to donate their unbuildable lots in exchange for an option on a set of merged and thus potentially buildable lots fronting on an existing road that is currently and must in the future continue to be maintained – for example the merger of lots 796 through 801.  While the lot resulting from the merger of these nonconforming lots may not fully meet current zoning size requirements, the resulting merged lot could become buildable by variance with the agreement of Sherwood Forest which, as a common scheme community, has the legal right of approval on rational variance applications which are consistent with its own overall development policy.

            In instances where logical internal buffer zones have limited development, or conforming lots eligible for development, individual creative solutions – consistent with an articulated planning principle – must be developed to assure equity and appropriate access either through frontage created by merger or conversion of portions of paper streets into driveways. 

            13.  By placing existing taxable lots within a designated buffer zone or green space, and even by holding lots in a tax exempt Land Bank during implementation of a land use plan, these lots are obviously removed from the tax rolls and impact not only the Town of Becket tax base but the potential revenue base for our own Road District costs. 

            14.  Here is the problem which this Discussion Paper encourages you to consider:  If we implement our land use planning correctly, the actual acreage of tax roll lots within Sherwood Forest will be reduced.  This in turn will result in some increase in the percentage of the aggregate revenues that will have to come from the remaining properties but those properties will be adequately preserved and their value will not only be protected but be more predictable.  This, in turn, should protect investments and preserve the total value of Sherwood Forest.  If we fail to introduce the protections afforded by sound land use planning, we will retain more lots on the tax rolls, but the overall value of Sherwood Forest (and its tax and potential revenue base) will decline or at best remain unpredictable.

            This is the challenge in the task before us.  The heart of that challenge will be achievement of the optimum balance between too little protective planning and too much.  Ultimately, the achievement of a proper balance will be left to Sherwood Forest itself within the overall parameters set by government through law and public policy.  Obviously the exact nature of the limit of those parameters will remain unknown until the required technical and engineering studies are completed and provide us with a true inventory of the Forest and its maximum development capacity.  But it is not too early for us to start to think about how we will approach our planning challenges once we do determine the limits of our options.

            How can we best work together to accomplish this task and assure the best possible outcome?