Cranbury buys 19 farms for preservation, development

[Guest]

"CRANBURY TWP. -- Working with other governmental agencies, Cranbury Township has preserved or bought development rights to 19 farms, more than twice the number acquired in any other town in Middlesex County."



http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/10/cranbury_twp_buys_development.html

[farms]

Super...So no money for a library, no money for police manpower, no money to replace police cars, no money to fix aging roads, no money, no money, no money.

[Guest]

Preserving Lum and Toscano is a far cheaper alternative than allowing residential development on those tracts. Moreover if they are not preserved the are available for builders remedy should we be found lacking in our COAH obligation. The only thing practically everyone in town agrees on Democrat and Republican alike, in the long run farm preservation saves us money.

[concerned]

Well said, Guest! More building means COAH, school strain, and many other issues that will snowball.

I'm proud of Cranbury for preserving more farms!

[Guest]

yay - go cranbury for saving farmland....maybe this place does have some hope saving open land.... i am tired of seeing houses built everywhere you look..its about time someone does something...to the 2nd poster..money money money- you should be talking to the builders - GREED!!

[Guest]

While I agree that farmland preservation is very important and I applaud us for backing this initiative, we have to realize that this also costs money to buy all this land, even with assistance from county and state. So, we must be realistic about this when we ask the town not to increase taxes, and while we keep approving the school budgets.

[Guest]

[Guest 2]

Isn't it wonderful we have preserved farmland, support our school budgets and have are smart enough to share a wonderful resource like our library with both the school and the community!

This is a great town. I don't know where some of these posters want to live, in a town that does not support its institutions and share vision of a rural community, or one that votes no on everything because they are scared to pay for what they want.

It isn't free guys!

[guest 3]

Agree with Guest 2.

We don't need a fancy new library. Kids and myself enjoy visiting the current library; we borrowed many books, games, videos, etc. It has a small town feel. People and kids kind of know each other.

Preserving a small, rural town feel is great (folks came to town to shoot movies!)! The BIG ball field near the school looks out of place.

With a great blue ribbon school and a frugal minded TC, Cranbury will do very well.

[Jay T.]

Just some information about farmland and open space in town that may be of interest.

In 2000, we had just under 1,800 acres. In 2009, with the addition of these two farms we have over 2,400 acres of preserved land. Open space was 105 acres in 2000 and in 2009 it was 317 acres.

We have a dedicated open space tax in our municipal rate of 2 cents. This year that tax is budgeted to generate $357,351.

The Open Space Trust Fund will have approximately $11,000 in it by the end of 2009. It will be replenished again in 2010 with the open space tax, but we won't know what that total amount of revenue for open space will be until next budget cycle. This money will then be used in 2010 to make principal and interest payments on our open space debt.

There is a ballott question asking for the state to issue bonds which Dan and I both support. This asks voters to approve the funding of preservation efforts. The $400 million would break down as follows:

(1) $218 million will be used for the Green Acres program,
(2) $146 million will be used for farmland preservation purposes
(3) $24 million will be used for the “Blue Acres”
(4) $12 million will be used for historic preservation purposes.

[Guest]

I will vote no on this because of blue acres.

[Guest]

[Jay T.]

Essentially, blue acres allows municipalities and counties to receive loans and grants to acquire lands in coastal areas that have been damaged by storms, are prone to storm damage, or buffer or protect other lands from storm damage provided the use is for conservation or passive recreation.

If there are homes, then they are usually demolished and the land is considered open space.

[Guest]