For the last couple of years, at the beginning of the winter, the Braeburn Country Club has erected light wooden fences across their best hills to stop anyone from sledding down. It also has erected similar fences across entry points (off Kent Rd and off Windsor Rd). These were easily circumvented/ bent over so that anyone could walk on the course.
This year, the club has erected a chain link fence, just under 6 ft high, across Windsor Rd and along the property line of an abutter, effectively stopping anyone to step on the land, permanently. No more quick peeks at the sunset, no looking at planets nor stars, away from city lights. No walking, no sledding, no skiing.
The Braeburn CC has non-profit status and therefore has a 75% exemption of its property tax according to state law 61 B. Its land is classified as ‘recreational/ open space’.
For years, the club has asked abutters to ratify (or at least not object to) capital improvements by sending notification letters before its new projects. This year, there was no notification, no dialogue with the abutters: the chain link fence just went up.
Interestingly, at the circle on top of Windsor Rd, the fence is set back several feet from the sidewalk; presumably so that the snow plows do not wreck it when piling snow at the end of the street. However, the club chose to continue the fence across the lawn that my neighbor cut and raked for the last 50 years or so; why couldn’t the fence be set back there too, closer to the trees?
There is also the issue of a wild life corridor that is being interrupted: the mature turkeys can fly over the fence but not the babies we see every Spring. Maybe they and the coyotes can cross somewhere else until the four miles of fencing are done.
In my opinion, Braeburn owes something to the community and it would have been so nice if the club regarded itself as a partner to the community.
Time to change the law?
I completely agree. For decades and decades, Braeburn tolerated the neighborhood’s gentle use of the grounds for sledding and cross-country skiing, apparently to no harmful effect. My children adored “Suicide Hill,” as it was known in the 80s, a perfectly safe experience on a tire or tube. I even skied down it once before the sledders had flattened the powdery snow, and I lived to tell the tale.
But let’s be clear: Is Braeburn violating city statutes in its constructing barriers or just being very unneighborly? Either way, I hope that we return to the status quo ante.
I think it’s probably as simple an answer as: a child was injured sledding on the property and the club’s insurance company required them to prohibit unmonitored access to the hills in the winter. The initial steps seem to have not worked, so more drastic measures were taken. It’s unfortunate that the club seems to be the one taking the fall here, when perhaps it’s a result of our overly litigious and risk-adverse culture.
Jay that could be… but it sure sounds like a series of assumptions on your part.
I would like to know if it was an incident/injury that led to this fence installation.
None of our private golf courses have stepped up to the plate in my memory to do anything for the public in gratitude for their 75% tax deduction funded by the taxpayers of Newton.
At least 3 Newton golf courses are with 0.5 miles of an MBTA or commuter rail station.
There … someone else said it. Think you have 24 votes? 13?
One potential fix would be to make the 61B reduction only applicable if a golf course is -both- a non-profit and open to the public year round. If Brae Burn et al. want to remain private then there’s no reason the public should be subsidizing their taxes since they aren’t actually providing anything back to the community. Unfortunate that would require a state level change to put into effect.
So why do they have the golf clubs have this tax break? What is the rational justification? What is the business case for the city?
Mass General Law 61B. Taxation of “recreational land”. http://archive.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/08/30/teed_off_at_tax_break/
Time to get rid of the golf courses. They serve as open space, only for a privileged few. They’re detrimental to the environment. They’re terrible land use at a time when there’s a housing shortage, and they’re preventing us from responding to climate change.
Seems that this elite entity does what it wants and everyone else can go pound sand.
Brae Burn is not a good neighbor.
I’m not even certain that Newton residents make up the majority of Brae Burn membership.
In addition to that, a significant percentage of their property are not “open space.” They are shorting the City of Newton a significant amount of tax dollars.
Time to change Mass General Law 61B, taxation of recreational land. At least try to. The country club set has lots of money and political connections – it’s the set that got this stuff passed in the first place – so easier said than done, but the effort must be made.
It’s even questionable their role as steward of recreational land. There’s no accountability for how the grassland is fertilized, and there’s a good possibility that in polluting streams that run through the golf course, they’re actually doing environmental damage.
@ Vicki D.
Not that I know of. According to the manager, there were break-ins in some of the club buildings (nothing to do with fencing the land, in my opinion) and there was one ‘trespasser’ who had such an argument with the staff that the police was called.
For Village14-ers who are curious about golf course tax assessments in Newton…
In 2020, I co-authored an article for the Newton Conservators explaining how Chapter 61B works for golf courses in Newton.
https://newtonconservators.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Newsletter-2020-Spring.pdf
If you want to do more of a deep dive into Chapter 61, there is an excellent handbook on the subject from the Mount Grace Conservation Trust.
https://www.mountgrace.org/fileadmin/files/Publications/MGLCT_Chapter_61_Handbook.pdf
Under Chapter 61B, country club open space is assessed at its “recreational use value,” which cannot exceed 25% of its fair market value. (Country club buildings are assessed at 100% fair market value.) When I asked Newton Assessors in 2020, I was informed that the actual assessment per acre for golf courses ranged from $52,596 to $55,723 at the time. This applies to most of the 548 acres of country club land in the city.
Thanks for those links (no pun)!
Has Braeburn removed the fences yet so our kids can go sledding this winter?
If not, they need to pony up some serious $$$ payable to the City of Newton ASAP. Anyone know exactly how much they pay in annual real estate taxes?
A quick review of the Assessor’s Database shows Brae Burn Country Club owns 8 separate parcels (I think). Total lot size = 8,416,000 sq ft. Total assessed value = $28 million.
(P.S. “Safety issues” — if any — should be corrected by them to ensure safe sledding to the degree possible/ reasonable.)
In some states, property owners are not liable for injuries if they allow the public to have access for recreation. Is that the case in Massachusetts?