The Missoula County commissioners voted to put an open-space bond on the November ballot that would raise $10 million over 20 years to set aside land properties in the rapidly growing area of Montana. Missoulians are still paying off a $5 million open-space bond passed in 1995. The $17 a year for an average homeowner - has protected more than 3,000 acres, including two popular local peaks, other recreational properties, Mount Jumbo and Mount Sentinel.
Meanwhile, other Western communities are also planning fall ballot measures to preserve open land. In California, voters will consider a $5.4 billion bond to protect hunting land, maintain coastlines and state parks and improve water quality. In Oregon, Portlanders will take up a $227 million bond to preserve natural open land and protect fish and wildlife habitat.
But it's hard to predict which measures will triumph and which will become land for sale. There are many factors involved: the "fiscal capacity" of a community, the wording of the measure, and even the length of the ballot it appears on. Tim Raphael, associate director of the Trust for Public Land's Conservation Finance Program, calls it creating "the magic combination."
In 2004, it looked like Utah had that magic combination. Initiative 1 would have raised state sales tax by one-twentieth of a cent to fund a $150 million bond to preserve open land and build convention centers and local government buildings. The proposal seemed a shoo-in; just days before the election, polls showed that about 60 percent of voters favored it. But come Election Day, the proposal lost, picking up only 45 percent of the vote. Supporters were left scratching their heads at the shock that the land never became land for sale.
Opponents argued that the measure duplicated other government efforts to protect the state's water and air, they said, and local governments were already doing enough for open land.
Western voters have generally been willing to open their wallets for open land, though. Since 1994, they've approved two-thirds of some 300 local and statewide ballot measures with open land goals, generating nearly $40 billion, according to a Trust for Public Land database.
Most such measures rely on bonds, mill levies, or sales taxes. Bonds allow communities to borrow money, which they often pay back with property tax hikes. However, bond money can be used only to acquire land properties, not to maintain them. Mill levies, which raise property taxes, and sales taxes generate money more slowly, but create a long-term funding source for maintenance and operation. Since the value of properties determines the increase, higher-income taxpayers usually bear more of the cost of bonds and levies. A sales tax increase hits the pockets of visitors and tourists as well as those of residents, but may place an unfair burden on lower-income people.
Meanwhile, the grassy meadows and forested slopes of Mount Jumbo, looming over downtown, give Missoula residents a tangible reminder of what their taxes have already paid for - and could be land for sale in the future, if the bond proposal is not passed. "We've preserved the mountains that are the defining characteristic of Missoula," say residents.
