Oppose Use of Private Land - Unless It’s Their Development

Phase 1: Land trusts obstruct private property owner’s use and development of land by:

• emotionalistic crusades about protecting the view, “habitats,” wetlands and shorefront
• campaigns to institute very strict local and state-level zoning
• suing to stop private use of land
• insider access to the State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) review of permit applications by private property owners
• secretly buying up land and holding it tax-free, often to flip it at a good price to the State, at taxpayers expense, under unscrutinized, private (monopoly) deals
• insider access to State “open space” land acquisition planning.

Result: Land trusts can control the fate of private land development plans and veto growth of the tax base.

Phase 2: Land trusts become developers themselves, using their non-profit status of real estate tax exemption and their special “relationship”* with DEC. (including a $300,000 project grant to Scenic Hudson from DEC)

Example: Scenic Hudson’s 85-acre Waterfront Development plan at the City of Beacon, New York, on the Hudson River. (See site diagram)

* “Personal relationships are critical to the success of partnerships... The Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land have systematized their relationships with state government...” Robert L. Bendick, Jr. “State and Local Partnerships,” Land Conservation Through Public/Private Partnerships (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy/Island Press 1992) pp 164-165. Mr. Bendick was DEC’s Deputy Commissioner in charge of lands and natural resources, and is now an official in The Nature Conservancy.

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