PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • December 21, 2021
Land trusts are part of the fight against climate change, the executive directors of two Maine land trusts boldly claim in a recent Maine Voices commentary. The authors offer no evidence for their statement in the Nov. 6 column. They gobble up taxable land and decrease the tax base wherever they exist, thereby causing an increase in the taxes of those residents and other land-owning entities that are not tax-exempt. The tax implications for those who pay taxes need to be announced before they are a fact, not after, and there is a need for full community decision-making about how to proceed. There is also the problem of how much tax-exempt land is enough. Another rarely mentioned problem: the increasing fire hazard to the unmanaged land and to its abutters. ~ Jerome A. Collins, Kennebunkport