Mount Ida College has sold an approximately five-acre parcel of land along Carlson Avenue to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (proposal here) and some abutters are “fighting mad,” the TAB’s Julie Cohen reports.
Resident Pamela Burton said she and other neighbors are concerned about multiple aspects of both developments including lower property values, safety, and impacts to the environment, to name a few. She said that she and group members have an alternate plan for the land that she will present to Mayor Ruthanne Fuller before making it public.
Took a minute to look at the Save Carlson’ Woods website, and I am not impressed with the histrionics. I stopped when I got to this ridiculous statement: “Every college campus in the country has a natural buffer that delineates its separation from adjacent residential neighborhoods…” I grew up in NYC, went to college in Cambridge, grad school in Philly, and lived near BU and can tell you that statement is false for countless schools.
I hope this group can tone down its rhetoric and stick to factual statements rather than obvious falsehoods.
The abutters are “fighting mad.” HA… In my opinion we should all be livid!!!
I’m sick of these institutions hiding behind property tax exempt status to avoid paying their fair share. This is a disgraceful inequity within our tax structure that must be rectified legislatively. In the interim, the City should start billing these tax dodgers for “services rendered” on an ad hoc basis, as institutions are not exempt from those kinds of charges.
According to state law, the legislative branch deals with land use issues. In this case, a private entity (Mount Ida College) sold a price of property to another private entity (LDS). A totally private transaction. The city council’s responsibility is to ensure that zoning requirements are adhered to, that special permits that LDS requests are approved, and that appropriate amenities are put into place.
This thread only mentions the sale of land to the Church of Latter Day Saints. In addition, a developer is planning for 8 homes of 5000 square feet each on another 5+ acres of land. What about Mayor Fuller’s inauguration speech where she mentioned keeping homes in similar sizes in neighborhoods? Oak Hill Park was originally a planned community after World War II, with slab ranch homes in modest sizes. Now, many have been sold and demolished, and large McMansions built in their place. However, there are still hundreds of ranch homes in Oak Hill Park. The proposed eight homes of 5000 square feet each is looking like a gated community. I was at the planning and development board meeting on December 4th. These houses would sell for well over $2 million. Where is the affordable housing in that development? There was also lively discussion about Carlson Ave as the ONLY entrance and exit to the college, the proposed church, and the proposed development.
Agree with Mike. Churches should pay taxes. All of them.
Sidenote… V14 admins … Please tone down the affiliate advertising popups and interstitials … They are degrading user experience to a near unusable state on my Pixel 2 XL
A very large percentage of its Mount Ida students are first generation college students. Remove their tax exemption as Mike Striar proposes and the college will need to raise tuition, reduce available financial aid, cut staff and programs, etc.
Mikes, there’s a reason why nonprofits are tax exempt. They exist to make our communities better places, to enhance peoples’ lives, to inspire, to provide a safety net and to do work that wouldn’t get done or be financially out of reach
Forcing nonprofits to pay property taxes would be a great disservice to these institutions ability to fulfill their missions and to the quality of all of our lives.
@Greg Reibman “Forcing nonprofits to pay property taxes would be a great disservice to these institutions ability to fulfill their missions and to the quality of all of our lives.”
oh yeh! Institutions like Boston College needs the tax break. Give me a break!
Greg, highly debatable that removing tax exemptions would require tuition raises. Tuition hikes largely feed administration and services in higher education, today, due to the phenomenon of cost disease. Great article about it here: https://medium.com/social-capital/the-higher-education-cost-spiral-january-21-2018-snippets-ed542f008cc6
In general I’m in favor of tax exemptions for non-profits, but drawing a line between tuition and taxes is spurious.
My point is that if nonprofits such as Mount Ida had to pay full commercial property tax rates as Mike Striar has long advocated they could not afford to provide the same level of programs services that have a great benefit to our society.
I live in Oak Hill Park. My thoughts…
After Mt. Ida bulldozes all 12 acres of Carlson Ave. Woods, the proposal is to build a 200 car parking lot, a church and a luxury home development. Carlson Ave. Woods sits 17′ above our homes and is populated with mature trees whose root systems are vast. Those trees protect our homes in the ‘low lands’ from experiencing even more water problems than we already have. Our concerns: (1) flood hazard conditions, (2) exponential increase in traffic and (3) destruction of a protected habitat called the Charles River Wildlife Corridor in which five species of plants and animals are on the critical list.
Destroying all 12 acres may be only the beginning. It’s worth looking up Barry Brown’s five-year expansion plan for the school. No hyperbole. Facts and reasonable fears. Thank you, Pamela
@Greg– Rather than debate a point on which we clearly disagree [how paying property taxes would impact Mt. Ida], let’s see if we can find some common ground. Do you agree with me that religious institutions should pay property taxes?
@Mike: As with other nonprofits, for every large, well endowed, religious organization there’s many more small, community-focused congregations that also play a vital role in communities across the nation.
Plus I don’t think anything should erode the separation between church and state.
So put me down for not wanting to ask places like the Myrtle Baptist Church, Union Church, FUSN and other vital Newton institutions to pay property taxes either.
@Pamela – thank you for providing useful information without hyperbole. If you could provide the website owner to do the same, it would be a great help for your cause. Falsehoods (especially blatantly obvious ones) make it easy to dismiss everything else being said and destroy credibility.
What Meredith said. A link to a map of where the land is in relation to OHP would be helpful to those who don’t know the area, as well as a map of the location of the proposed development.
Mt. Ida’s original 1939 design featured an ’emerald necklace’ of woods surrounding the school. The intent was to provide students with a leafy campus and to create a vegetative buffer between the school and the suburban neighborhood in which it was located. The 12 acre parcel being sold for development runs along Carlson Avenue, on the south side of the campus. All maps, documents, (a donation button – tax deductible,) etc. may be found at the web site http://savecarlsonwoods.org.
Thank you.
https://www.savecarlsonwoods.org/
Hi Meredith,
Thank you for your comment on the use of language on our site. With all that needs to be said, the immediacy of the situation, and mixed with our feelings about the woods, indeed sometimes we can go onto hyperbole or factual error. But thanks to neighbors like you, this can be corrected, and it immediately was. The image of the suburban college is stuck in my mind, I guess, without realizing that wide diversity of campuses that there are across the country.
Any other comments and suggestions are very much welcome.
Regards
So, first off I’m very sympathetic to the concerns of Pamela and others regarding the land sale. I love Oak Hill Park, having spent nearly a decade as a little kid living at 105 Hanson Road. Carlson Woods is the natural buffer between Mt. Ida College and Wiswall Road, which is one of only two ways to access OHP (the other being Spiers Road, near the city line with Boston).
That being said, I don’t know that the Save Carlson Woods folks have much of a case with the city to block this project. The issue involves private land transactions among three parties, with redevelopment plans all proposed by right within an area zoned for single-family use. This is not Webster Woods, which BC has yet to announce any plans for and that the city could perhaps justify purchasing a conservation restriction on. Carlson Woods, to my knowledge, is not widely used for recreation and does not have the same type of ecological significance as that wooded area in Chestnut Hill. If I am wrong, I stand corrected.
@Greg– I accept the fact that we are in complete disagreement on this issue. Personally, I’m sick and tired of subsidizing other people’s religions by paying property taxes for their churches, synagogues, etc. I doubt seriously that was Thomas Jefferson’s intent when he coined the phrase “separation between church and state.” I took note of the fact that the tax exempt Catholic church contributed $850K in an attempt to defeat the successful ballot initiative that legalized cannabis. That may be your idea of how separation of church and state works. It most definitely is not mine.
Mike: Your concern about large institutions is a fair one. But how about an organization like, for example, Myrtle Baptist, which knits together and serves a very distinct, underserved segment of our community? I don’t have any first hand knowledge of their finances but can only assume taxing their small parcel on Curve Street would be a real financial challenge. I don’t want my government to choose which religious organizations can be property tax exempt based on their policies so I think they all need to be exempt.
@Greg– I completely agree with not having government choose which religious organizations are tax exempt. My conclusion however is the exact opposite of yours… I think they should all pay their fair share of property taxes.
Mike: So I guess we will agree to disagree!
Not the first time, Greg. And I’m fairly certain it won’t be the last. But it is always a pleasure!
I understand the distress over losing the woods and particularly the single family home development, but like Andy I don’t see much that the Mayor or City Council can do about private business transactions.
@Greg – The problem I see with the current system, and this is a great example specifically, is it feels like non-profits get to have their cake and eat it too in terms of their tax exempt status. Mount Ida gets all the benefit of sitting on this land without paying property tax and then gets to turn around and sell it off without any strings attached to a developer who I’m guessing is also going to make a tidy profit on these 5k+ sqft houses. The city meanwhile gets to absorb all those impacts and besides that gets squat. I’m not necessarily opposed to having the exemption for non-profits, but there should be conditions that go along with it so we don’t end up in a situation like this.
On the other hand, land that previously was tax-exempt will no longer be; 8 $2,000,000 houses will generate quite a bit in property taxes. I get it – no one likes to see “the woods” in their neighborhood disappear. But when those woods are privately owned and there are no conservation restrictions, the owner is completely within their rights to sell, and the new owners are within their rights to develop them within the current zoning. Mount Ida isn’t so much trying to “expand” as they are to modernize and upgrade in order to survive in a very challenging environment for small liberal arts colleges. Selling some land allows them to do that.
Patrick: What Tricia said.
Thank you for this discussion thread and for bringing attention to our plight over here in Oak Hill Park. Thoughts:
Webster Woods is pretty, and it is enjoyed recreationally by the neighborhood. Webster Woods, (owned by an institution,) is worth saving and with Mayor Fuller’s help, it appears the neighbors might win! Carlson Ave. Woods is decidedly NOT pretty. Not at all. It is functional. It performs a function, essential to the delicate ecosystem down here in Oak Hill Park. And yes, 8 luxury homes will generate income for the City, but a church and parking lot for 200 cars will not. In fact, the private way that will now become a City street will require City funds for storm water maintenance, winter plowing, summer mowing and fall leaf removal, and additional waste management pick ups. Expenses the City does not now have. Since 2008 when Mt. Ida added more than 100 students to its roster, the accident rate exiting the campus has increased exponentially. Can you really support a plan that proposes a parking lot for 200 more cars and the cars of 8 new homes? This plan is so dangerous! Can you really support a plan that has reduced the value of our homes by 1.5% as of December, 2017 once this proposal was announced? We are depending upon our fellow Newtonians to support our position; we hope we can rely on you. Thank you.
As others have pointed out, the Save Carlson Woods website is playing loose with facts, which hurts the cause. The website proclaims in big bold letters that Mt Ida’s enrollment has grown by 50% since 2011, from about 1,000 to over 1,500 students. Yet the published enrollment has ranged from 1,347-1,500+ since 2010, and Pamela above cites a 100 student increase since 2008.
The college does not have a “policy of dramatic growth.” They are experiencing “dramatic growth” (though clearly not by 50%) as a result of their efforts to rebrand and strengthen the college, which has been on precarious financial footing. Like many small liberal arts colleges, their endowment is small so they are very much tuition driven – selling land they are not using helps to finance other campus and programmatic upgrades, which in turn helps with student enrollment and retention. In any case, the website’s focus on “stopping Mt Ida” is misplaced – the focus should be on working with the city and the new owners of these properties to ensure that negative impacts on the surrounding neighborhood and traffic safety are minimized as much as possible.
Tricia, you’re wrong.
The source for the growth in enrollment is President Barry Brown, and in writing.
http://www.mountida.edu/about-us/office-of-the-president/
The site is not “loose with the facts”, as you can see.
What is clear is that you dont agree with our objectives, nor the way we’re going about them, and that’s Ok. I’ll admit that we’re working fast and furious to catch up to the college, the builder, and their lawyers, after keeping us in the dark for 8 months (we found out late Nov , and they’d submitted paperwork early April!) and yes, we may make some errors, which we will immediately correct if so.
You seem to see things from the perspective of the college, and its financial situation. We, the neighbors, see the risk to our properties, our safety, and the woods which were meant by urban design to be a green buffer zone not sold for profit.
What do the Oak Hill Park abutters want the Mayor or the city to specifically do to change the present outcome?
Mt Ida owns the land. They sold it to a church and a developer. The developer is building by right single family homes.
This situation is entirely different from the city pursuing a deal on Webster Woods. The temple owned the land it sold to BC. There was nothing that could be done to stop the sale. Now that BC owns it, the city is dealing with BC, the new owner, to classify Webster Woods as conservation land for recreational use.
For clarity:
In 2008, Mt Ida built a new dorm in which an additional 133 students were invited to live on campus. In his 2017 address to new students, President Barry Brown stated, ” Over the past five years, the College has grown from approximately one thousand to over 1500 students.” That number, a 50% increase, includes the new dorm residents. I do apologize for the confusion.
Pamela
Tricia, in addition to getting your enrollment numbers wrong, you contradict yourself when you say that “The college does not have a ‘policy of dramatic growth.’ They are experiencing ‘dramatic growth’ (though clearly not by 50%) as a result of their efforts to rebrand and strengthen the college, which has been on precarious financial footing.”
Like you say, colleges are facing challenges, so the only way that they “experience dramatic growth” is through an aggressive policy of recruitment. In other words, achieving “dramatic growth” is not a spontaneous event, but an outcome by design and, like you say “effort”. It follows that we could call that a policy of “dramatic growth”.
I’m sure the new president is pitching those numbers to reinforce the idea of strong enrollment growth which is key to their survival, but he’s probably being a little fuzzy with full-time vs part-time students, etc. The 2013 Mount Ida website listed a total enrollment of 1400. I have no connection to Mt Ida, but I know what the economic climate is for small liberal arts colleges with little endowment and lots of competition: stagnant or declining enrollment = death. And if they were to close, like many of their peers have, you would likely be looking at a MUCH larger development impact. I’m actually sympathetic to your situation as well – my point is that the neighborhood would be better served by focusing on working with the city rather than trying to stop the college from selling their land.
I see your point, and we are working our utmost to work the city to try to get Mt Ida to listen to other ways in which we could all find a solution in which funds could be raised with other use of this land. We also met President Brown once (after much insistence) to get him to see us as the permanent stakeholders that we are in this. We hoped to work with him towards a solution that we could live for, and he was cordial, attentive and collaborative during that meeting, but after that, he has ignored and disregarded us as though we’d never talked. Perhaps he just played us, I dont know. And in fact, if President Brown is being fuzzy with his numbers, you should point out that it is he, who is “playing loose with the facts” and not us.
You know, “The treeless, McMansion filled city” just doesn’t have the same zing that “The Garden City” does…….
Here’s the biggest issue I have:
“She said that she and group members have an alternate plan for the land that she will present to Mayor Ruthanne Fuller before making it public.”
This, unfortunately for the residents of Oak Hill Park, isn’t how this works. I love roaming the green spaces of Newton as much as anyone, but it’s the height of arrogance to think that you can interfere in a private, legal property transaction and come up with something better, and that you’re gonna take it straight to the mayor and that she will magically do something to reverse this deal.
Not the biggest issue here for sure, but currently there is no sidewalk on a big section of Carlson Ave. If this development is going to happen, hopefully the city could at least get that done.
Regarding the thought that eight $2 million will generate a lot of property taxes: the FY18 residential property tax rate is $10.82 per thousand of assessed value, so a $2 million house would generate $21,640 per year in property taxes. The cost per student in Newton schools is on the order of $18,000. I’m not sure how many empty-nesters buy 5,000 square foot houses, so odds are, at least one child per house (though some percent might go to private school). By the time you account for other city services, if there is any net revenue to the city from these houses, it’s not going to be a windfall, and not a reason to be indifferent to the environmental cost of losing acres of woods.
@Greg—what are your thoughts about the 3 golf courses in Newton that are tax exempt. Instead of a college or a private business paying taxes they just take the millions and re-invest it. AKA BU along Comm Ave. they buy building after building which creates a supply and demand issue which increases everyones elses rent
I always thought it was misguided that Massachusetts law allows private golf courses a 75 percent property tax break.
Julia,
Even if these houses are never built, the calculations you show for school costs v.s property tax are concerning.
Based on your assumptions, every single home under 2M in Newton is a net loss if there is 1 or more school children living there.
Doesn’t bode well for the ‘long term’ finances of the city, as more and more families are attracted the Newton.. any new family buying in Newton (likely someone without school age kids) under 2M is a net loss.. this becomes the counter argument to tearing down a 600k cape for a 2M macMansion
@Bugek, exactly — it does not bode well for long-term finances. Though with regard to what are most likely by now $700,000 Capes, bungalows and ranches, they are suitable for, and in my neighborhood often occupied by, singles like me, or empty-nest couples or widows/widowers who don’t need to downsize because their house isn’t too big when the kids graduate. It would be nice if we could keep people in their houses long enough that the positive cash flow years balance out the negative cash flow years.
The real lesson is not to let any more net revenue-positive commercial property, be rezoned to residential or MU4. When you’re in a hole, stop digging.
Greg, I completely agree. Not only do the golf courses get a 75% tax break, golf courses are a major water polluter. Pesticides and fertilizer runoff into our aqua filters and streams.
From the Audubon International’s Golf and the Environment:
What are Golf’s Potential Environmental Impacts?
In the past, environmental issues on the golf course have been overlooked. These include:
Pollution of ground water and surface water caused by the use of pesticides, fertilizers, and other
contaminants
Poor stream water quality due to eroding shorelines
Withdrawal of large quantities of water for irrigation
Degradation or loss of natural areas
Health hazards from chemical handling and applications
Negative impacts of chemical use on “non-target” wildlife
Unsound turf management driven by increasing and unrealistic golfer expectations and demands
@Julia
Interesting points.
The variable cost per student is the relevant metric for that analysis. Fixed costs, of which there are many, won’t be impacted by additional students in the school system.