Published: 10/12/2007  

My View:

I'd like to lay out two reasons to vote for the Community Preservation Act when it appears on the November ballot - or, more precisely, two reasons NOT to vote against it.

The first reason: Voting for the Community Preservation Act does NOT take money away from the schools or other city services. The Community Preservation surcharge is a fee we impose on ourselves to set up a fund for things that would be difficult to do if we had to fund them out of ordinary revenues.

A classic example is the renovation of the City Hall tower. At a recent hearing on the Community Preservation Act, representatives of the community preservation commissions in both North Andover and Newburyport told voters that those towns have recently used Community Preservation money to improve their city and town halls.

It would have been difficult, if not impossible, to fund those renovations out of those municipalities' regular annual budgets, but, because the Community Preservation money is a fund outside the normal budgeting process, the panels were able to set in motion a public-private partnership that resulted in renovations that have enhanced the downtown areas in both.

More importantly, the Community Preservation funding served as "seed money." A comparatively small amount was used to help set the process in motion. State matching money as well as private donations actually paid for a good deal of the effort.

When you look at the small amount most taxpayers will be asked to pay each year ($35 to $70 a year for the average homeowner) and the return on our investment, it is hard to see a reason to vote against the Community Preservation Act. But, as I saw when I worked on the library renovation project last April, many people became confused and thought the library debt exclusion would somehow take money away from our schools and firehouses.

Let me be perfectly clear: Adopting the Community Preservation has no negative impact on our city budget. None.

In fact, as representatives of Rockport, Ipswich, Newburyport and North Andover attested at the hearing, it can actually be beneficial. By allowing us to raise money outside the budget process and with the prospect of state and private matching money, we can accomplish goals that we couldn't possibly fund using the "normal" methods of appropriations. It's a gift. We should accept it.

The second reason that people have told me they won't vote for the Community Preservation is that they don't trust city government to spend our money wisely. It's true that our city officials haven't always chosen wisely in financial matters, but we have to get over the notion that government is innately wasteful and profligate.

Most of the people working in our city government are hard-working and well-intentioned. If they guess wrong, it's often because their hands are tied by Proposition 21/2 or by cuts in state aid that make it difficult to carry out the tasks we as citizens want to have done.

I grew up in the 1950s, when government created good public schools, the interstate highway system and national defense student loans - all government actions that helped make the United States the most prosperous nation the world had ever seen. Government is not the enemy, and it is not by nature inefficient. The Community Preservation Act offers us an opportunity to invest in our community again.

Beyond that, the structure of the act ensures that the public is represented in the decisions on how to allocate the money that has been set aside. No "bureaucrats" decide how to spend the money; your friends and neighbors look into proposals put forward by other friends and neighbors - for athletic fields and open space and historic preservation.

Gloucester's future very much depends on preserving our historic role as the nation's premier fishing port, the natural beauty of our marshes and shoreline, our harbor and our history. It's as if the Community Preservation Act were written expressly for us. Other cities and towns on Cape Ann have seen the wisdom of investing in preserving the special qualities we enjoy in this very special part of the world. If we don't act to save what is special about our city, who will?

For more information on the Community Preservation Act, please visit the Website: www.preservegloucester.org.

The above article appeared as a "My View" column in a recent issue of the Gloucester Daily Times