Open Space Survey Questions Being Questioned

A Radnor Township survey that could influence the 2011 budget and future official actions found that while residents are supportive of spending public dollars to preserve open space, not as many said they would support purchasing a portion of Ardrossan Estate if it meant a $129 average increase in their tax bill.

The survey of 320 residents of various ages and incomes who lives throughout the township also found that residents are supportive of the township’s financial support of the , and . (Read more about the survey this week on Radnor Patch)

“The information in this survey will help us… We have limited resources and we have to decide how to spend them,” commissioner Elaine Paul Schaefer said earlier this month when the results were presented by the Impact Group, the Ohio marketing firm that performed the survey and accompanying focus groups.

Read the survey questions .

But the issue of open spaced preservation, which Schaefer ran and won on in 2009, is likely the hottest topic this election season as some infer that the 300-plus acre Ardrossan estate may finally start to be developed.

In 2006 Radnor voters approved a $20 million bond referendum for open space money.

Schaefer said she was not surprised to find that 42 and 24 percent of those surveyed said they were very supportive and somewhat supportive, respectively, “of the continued use of public dollars to purchase and preserve open space within Radnor Township.”

The follow-up question of how supportive respondents would be of “purchasing a portion of the land surrounding the Ardrossan Estate if it meant an increase in your property taxes by $129 annually, on average?” has caused quite a stir among some in the community and “unfortunately created a bit of unnecessary anxiety,” Schaefer said.

The top three responses to that question were 34 percent “very unsupportive”; 20 percent “very supportive”; and 16 percent “somewhat supportive.”

That would be the worst-case scenario of a sort, she said. The $129 additional tax payment would be for the property with the averaged assessed value in Radnor, which is $313,000 in 2001. Most people would need to pay above or below that number.

(Find your property’s assessed value here.)

According to manager Bob Zienkowski, the question assumes that all of the voter-approved $20 million would be borrowed and spent.

Schaefer also said it assumes that it would be financed only with new tax dollars.

“Neither of these scenarios are under consideration, but as an academic exercise the question showed that resident support in such a worst-case scenario would not be as strong,” she noted.

Commissioner Kevin Higgins said he thinks the survey responses to the Ardrossan Estate question would have been different had it been posed, “How supportive would you be to purchase a portion of Ardrossan if it meant issuing a $20 million dollar bond to be paid back over 30 years that would result in approximately $5,000 of debt and interest per residential property over the life of the bond?”

Read one citizen’s opinion on open space acquisition .

Check back with Radnor Patch this week for more interesting results from the survey.