Community Preservation Committee

Under the provisions of the Community Preservation Act (CPA), Sudbury established a Community Preservation Committee.

This Committee is required to have 5-9 members and include a member designated from each of the following commissions or boards: Conservation Commission, Historical Commission, Planning Board, Park and Recreation Commission, and Housing Authority. The Committee shall study the needs, possibilities and resources of the Town regarding community preservation.

The Duties of said Community Preservation Committee shall be to:

(1) The Community Preservation Committee shall study the needs, possibilities, and resources of the Town regarding community preservation. The Committee shall consult with existing municipal boards, including the Conservation Commission, the Sudbury Historical Commission, the Planning Board, the Park and Recreation Commission, the Sudbury Housing Authority, or persons acting in those capacities or performing like duties, in conducting such studies. As part of its study, the Committee shall hold one or more public informational hearings on the needs, possibilities, and resources of the Town regarding community preservation possibilities and resources, notice of which shall be posted publicly and published for each of two weeks preceding a hearing in a newspaper of general circulation in the town.

(2) Community Preservation Committee shall make recommendation to the Town Meeting for the acquisition, creation, and preservation of open space; for the acquisition and preservation of historic resources; for the acquisition creation, and preservation of land for recreational use; for the creation, preservation, and support of community housing; and for rehabilitation or restoration of such open space, historic resources, land for recreational use and community housing that is acquired or created as provided in MGL Chapter 44B. With respect to community housing, the Community Preservation Committee shall recommend, wherever possible, the reuse of existing buildings or construction of new buildings on previously developed sites.

(3) Community Preservation Committee may include in its recommendation to the Town Meeting a recommendation to set aside for later spending funds for specific purposes that are consistent with community preservation but for which sufficient revenues are not then available in the Community Preservation Fund to accomplish that specific purpose or to set aside for later spending funds for general purposes that are consistent with community preservation.

Contact

Email: cpc@sudbury.ma.us
Phone: 978-639-3387

CPA Matching Fund Projections for 2010

The Massachusetts Department of Revenue (DOR) has issued an updated projection of the first round CPA Trust Fund distribution that communities can expect to receive this coming October. DOR is estimating the first round distribution will be between 31% and 32% of the amount that communities raise locally from their CPA surcharge.

This projection is higher than DOR's previous estimate of 28%, as Trust Fund revenues collected at the Registry of Deeds are up slightly from last year.

The formula DOR uses to distribute revenue from the statewide CPA Trust Fund on an annual basis is complicated. In order to better understand the formula used to distribute revenue from the Statewide CPA Trust Fund, the Community Preservation Coalition provides the following description of the general criteria applied.

The good news for Sudbury is that this will amount to another $400,000 - $450,000 allocation to the local CPA program in 2010.

Round One

Eighty percent (80%) of the total revenue in the Trust Fund at the end of August each year will be paid out in round one, and each of the CPA communities will receive the same percentage match to funds raised locally with their CPA surcharges. If a community’s CPA surcharge is less than 3%, it is not eligible to advance to the second and third round.

Rounds Two and Three

The funds remaining in the CPA Trust Fund after the first round distribution (20% of the total funds in the Trust Fund) are available for distribution in rounds two and three. Only communities that have adopted the maximum 3% surcharge are eligible to receive additional funding in rounds two and three. There are 74 communities with a 3% surcharge level (click here to see the list).

The second and third rounds are weighted so that smaller and less affluent communities receive higher funding. The state’s Commissioner of Revenue is charged with ranking CPA communities based on population and property valuation per capita. Based on this ranking, communities are divided into deciles, which determine the degree of additional funds distributed (click here to see the decile rankings).

Communities with the lowest equalized property valuations and smallest populations are placed in the most favorable deciles, which provide higher matches in the second and third rounds. Decile 1 provides the highest level of funding in rounds two and three (and decile 10 the lowest).

As a result of this weighting, it is possible that some smaller CPA communities will still end up receiving a 100% match by the end of the second round. The third round distribution is optional, at the discretion of the Commissioner of Revenue.

Want to know more?

The two documents below explain this formula in a bit more detail:

Click here for a sample calculation of the Trust Fund distribution formula (prepared by DOR)

Click here for the description of the Trust Fund distribution formula excerpted from the Community Preservation Act, MGL Chapter 44B, Section 10

Monday, March 15, 2010

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