2017-03-27-CPC-ATM-rpt - Laserfiche WebLink

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Community Preservation Act The CPA is a state statute which individual communities in the Commonwealth may choose to adopt; Lexington adopted the statute by a vote of Town Meeting in 2006. CPA communities impose a surcharge on their own property taxes of up to 3%, and funds raised from the surcharge are restricted to use for projects in four categories: community housing, historic resources, open space and recreation. To support expenditures in these areas, the state "matches" the funds raised by the community surcharges annually at a certain percentage. Lexington elected a 3% surcharge on both residential and commercial taxpayers. Mindful of the burden on homeowners, however, the Town also adopted provisions which exempt the first $100,000 of home value from the surcharge and grant a total exemption from the surcharge to lower income residents. In FY17, the annual surcharge averaged $361.71 billed per Lexington household. Our commercial and industrial taxpayers were billed $871,478.80 in FY17, representing approximately 19% of our billed CPA surcharges. The state match is distributed annually, based on the prior year's surcharge receipts. The match was originally 100%, but has declined since 2006 as additional communities have adopted the statute and joined the funding pool. The state match derives its revenue from fees collected at the Registries of Deeds across the state, but those fees have never been adjusted since CPA was signed into law in 2000. During the last three consecutive fiscal years, Lexington has benefitted from surplus transfers from the state budget to the CPA Trust Fund. The FY16 budget authorized the transfer of$10 million from the FY15 budget surplus, the FY15 budget authorized the transfer of$11.4 million from the FY14 budget surplus and the FY14 budget authorized the transfer of$25 million from the FY13 budget surplus. In July 2016, Governor Baker signed the fiscal year 2017 state budget which authorized the transfer of$10 million from the FY16 budget surplus, marking the fourth year the state budget included a surplus transfer to the CPA Trust Fund. Unfortunately, the FY16 state budget ultimately closed with a $0 balance, therefore eliminating the possibility of the $10 million transfer to the fund. In 2016, a record 16 communities in Massachusetts placed CPA adoption on their ballots. 11 of those communities voted during the November election to adopt the Community Preservation Act, including the cities of Boston and Springfield. While most of the adopting communities voted for just a 1% or 1.5% surcharge (Watertown adopted a 2% surcharge), the impact of these additional communities on future state disbursements will be seen in future fiscal years. While Lexington's FY17 state match is heavily impacted by the lack of state budget surplus funds and its FY18 state match expected to be impacted by the additional CPA communities, CPA advocates hope that these foreseeable decreases will strengthen the effort to pass legislation that calls for a permanent fix to the CPA Trust Fund. A piece of legislation introduced in 2015 entitled,An Act to Sustain Community Preservation 2