Towns and cities that recently approved the Community Preservation Act will be making some tough decisions over the next few months – and some town officials suggest they act quickly to avoid higher land costs in a hot real estate market.

Thirty-one communities approved the measure, a state law passed last September that allows cities and towns to impose up to a 3 percent surcharge on annual property taxes and get matching state money to preserve affordable housing, open space and historical sites. Nineteen communities voted against and eight will be deciding on it next year.

Since all of the communities approved the act in either April or May, most of them are just beginning to examine all of the choices and decisions they’ll have to make.

Leaders from Tyngsborough, Wayland and Amherst – communities that approved the measure – said their towns are in the process of forming Community Preservation Committees. The law requires communities to form such committees to map out strategies and make recommendations for how money should be spent.

Other towns, like Hingham, Harvard, Duxbury and Norfolk, are one step ahead, having already created committees and started meeting to discuss options.

Affordable housing, historical preservation and open space projects must each receive 10 percent of all money collected, according to the law. The remaining 70 percent must also be earmarked for those types of projects, with the towns deciding how much to spend on each cause.

Amherst Planning Director Bob Mitchell said one of the issues his town must tackle upfront is how to use the money. The town can select and complete projects immediately, bond for land purchases, or combine collected revenue with grants from other programs.

“That’s one of the charges of the Community Preservation Committee,” Mitchell said. “The committee has to come back with a proposal.”

Cape Cod leaders said communities in Barnstable County faced some of the same issues when a similar measure was passed in 1998. Like the towns that said yes to CPA earlier this year, Cape Cod’s 15 towns approved a land bank referendum that added a 3 percent surcharge to real estate tax bills for the purchase and preservation of land that could have been developed into housing.

Cape Cod residents were happy to have a chance to save land that was being gobbled up by developments and wanted to start projects almost immediately.

“The Land Bank has been very popular,” said Frank Shephard, chairman of the Cape Cod Commission.

Margo Fenn, executive director of the Cape Cod Commission, agrees.

“Any town on Cape Cod can point to very important pieces of land that have been protected by the land bank,” Fenn said. In Harwich, an environmentally sensitive area near the Herring River was purchased, while in Provincetown, the community was able to buy and preserve an area surrounding Shank Painter Pond, she said.

Many Cape Cod communities felt a sense of urgency to purchase land because officials feared if they hesitated land prices would soar and become unaffordable, Shephard said.

A land bank committee in Harwich created a ranking and rating system to prioritize what parcels of land to buy.

Likewise, communities that have recently passed the CPA should start prioritizing by using similar ranking systems, Fenn said.

Even though several Cape Cod towns started borrowing money to buy land, other communities may choose to collect money and spend it as it accrues.

“In a place that’s not experiencing a lot of real estate development, that may be a good strategy,” Fenn said.

At the same time, neighboring towns that are interested in preservation should work together, said Fenn and Shephard.

Neighboring communities that passed the CPA can seek assistance from regional planning and economic development boards to see if they have common interests, Shephard said. For example, if there is land that connects several towns, the leaders from those communities may want to save it and create bicycling or walking trails, he said.

In Barnstable County, the Cape Cod Commission, the Association for the Preservation of Cape Cod and the Compact of Cape Conservation Trusts have worked together to educate individual town committees about how to use land bank money to benefit several interests.

Groups within towns can also join efforts to work on projects. In Harwich, the town’s land bank committee has worked with the Harwich Conservation Trust to buy property.

Fenn said the joint venture has worked out nicely because the trust can move quickly and more freely to spend money, while the land bank committee must wait to get town approval before purchasing property.

However, Fenn recognized that not all regions and communities that have passed the CPA are like Cape Cod. She also said communities that approved the CPA have a tougher challenge because they must focus not just on open space purchases, but on land that is suitable for housing and property that has historical value.

Making Plans
In Amherst, the town’s boards and committees have started discussing who will serve on the CPA committee, Planning Director Mitchell said.

Amherst has a long tradition of protecting open space and aggressively preserving farmland, according to Mitchell.

It has also been successful in creating housing for low- and moderate-income individuals. The town is one of only a few Massachusetts communities that have met the state-set 10 percent threshold for affordable housing.

Mitchell estimates that Amherst, which will add a 1 percent real estate tax surcharge, will collect between $100,000 to $130,000 from the residents during the first year.

“We saw the Community Preservation Act as another tool – with the money – that will help us continue those efforts,” said Mitchell.

Like Amherst, Hingham has also made historic and open space preservation a big priority, said Planning Administrator Katy Lacy.

The town, located 15 miles south of Boston, has created six historic districts to help maintain its character.

However, Lacy said there has also been strong advocacy for more affordable housing in Hingham, where the median sales price for a single-family house last year was $365,000.

All the different groups with strong interests will be “thinking long and hard about how to divvy up money,” Lacy said.

Leaders in Tyngsborough, a small residential community in the Northwest section of Middlesex County near Chelmsford, Dracut and Lowell, are hoping the funding will help the town complete projects and plans they’ve had to put on hold because of a lack of money.

“I view the Community Preservation Act as a good tool for making things happen,” said Mark Whitehead, Tyngsborough’s director of planning and community development.

The CPA will also help soften the effects of a recent development boom in Tyngsborough, where the population has doubled over the last decade, according to Whitehead.

“We’ve had massive build-out over the last 10 years,” Whitehead said.

Along with the population increase, came higher home prices.

Prices for single-family homes and condominiums jumped 71 percent over the last five years, according to information from Warren Information Services, a sister company of Banker & Tradesman. The median price for a single-family home and condominium was $122,500 in 1995. Last year, that figure had risen more than $87,000 to $209,900.

Community leaders are optimistic that the new law will help their towns provide affordable housing while at the same time prevent sprawl, protect water supplies and save farmland and historical landmarks.

“It’s considered a collaborative opportunity for all the different boards and organizations in town to execute some forward-thinking plan with regard to housing and open space,” said Timothy Clark, a member of Harvard’s planning board and community preservation committee.