A north suburban environmentalist group has launched a counterattack against a study by Northbrook that predicted that a proposed open-space district could cost taxpayers hundreds of dollars a year.
The Northbrook study said open space could cost an average of $325 to $960 per household in new taxes and forfeited tax revenues every year through the early 21st Century.
This would happen, the study predicted, if 253 acres out of more than 1,100 acres in the Techny area were preserved rather than developed with office buildings, shopping centers, research and assembly facilities and residences.
This prediction made open space ”look as onerous to residents as possible,” said Paul Armstrong, president of the Northfield Township Conservancy, a group that supports Northfield Township`s efforts to form an open-space district.
”It`s all speculation,” Armstrong said. ”It`s nebulous. Is it necessary that taxes go up if open space goes in? The answer is no.”
Township residents will vote in November on whether to create an open-space district. The Northbrook study is likely to fuel debate in the coming months on whether keeping large tracts of Techny undeveloped would be worth the cost.
The alternative, opponents of intense development have argued, would be traffic jams, worsened noise and air pollution and possible flooding in communities downstream from Techny.
The Northbrook study assumed that the township would have to sell $80 million in bonds to acquire all of the land it wanted, while the conservancy contends only $60 million in bonds would be necessary, Armstrong said.
The conservancy also released this week a study by Chapman & Cutter, a municipal bond counsel, that predicted that a Northbrook household wuld pay $40 to $50 in new real estate taxes for every $1,000 it now pays.
Armstrong said this was a more realistic figure than a previous estimates for an $80 million bond issue. One, by the township, predicted $325 in new real estate taxes for the owner of a $200,000 home. Another, by Northbrook, forecast up to $290 in new taxes on a $235,000 home.
Northbrook last month annexed 770 acres of Techny under an agreement with the Society of the Divine Word, a Catholic missionary order that owns the land. The agreement permits the construction of 3.8 million square feet of commercial and industrial buildings, along with 682 residences.
The conservancy hopes to reduce the nonresidential construction of the Divine Word tract to as little as 1.2 million square feet by having the proposed Northfield Township Open Space District acquire 155.6 acres there.
One purpose of the village study was to gather background information for trustees in the event the Society of the Divine Word ever reached an agreement with the township and came back to the village, seeking to amend its annexation agreement to permit more open space, said John M. Novinson, Northbrook assistant village manager.
In the Northbrook study, the ”opportunity cost” combined the cost of open space, including new taxes to pay off the land acquisition bonds, and lost property tax revenues that otherwise would have flowed to the
municipality and local schools, parks and libraries.
This cost would rise as development progressed through the year 2006, when it would peak at $960, the study figured.
After the open-space bonds were retired and the Divine Word project was completed at an unspecified date in the early 21st Century, the opportunity cost to the average household would decline to $396 or to $730, depending on whether 173 acres now being used as a landfill were developed.
