Bedford moves towards land conservation goal

BEDFORD, N.Y. - Well on its way to preserving 30 percent of Bedford’s land as undeveloped open space, the Town Board is expected to enshrine that widespread conservation goal in its principal document for guiding prospective growth.

Bedford Today, the latest update of the town’s comprehensive plan, will likely adopt the state and national government’s so-called 30x30 initiative, urging governments at all levels to protect 30 percent of their land by 2030. It would be an aspirational goal, not entirely within the town’s control, Supervisor Ellen Calves says, “since it would require a lot of private activity to achieve this in five years.”

Already, Bedford has removed some 6,000 acres, or 26 percent of its assessable land, from development, and tax rolls, according to statistics contained in an earlier preliminary draft of the comprehensive plan.

The latest draft, released earlier this month, is available on the town website. While the online draft omits the current open-space specifics, they are expected to be recommended for adoption in the final document, Calves said last week.

The Town Board formally accepted the latest draft at its Feb. 4 meeting and set a public hearing for next month.

In a 20-minute presentation at this month’s meeting, Planning Director Jesica Youngblood discussed highlights of the new plan, which the board authorized five years ago as an update of the 2003 comprehensive plan.

“Bedford’s changed a lot in the past 20 years and it’s important to capture those changes,” she said. 

For example, the 2003 plan did not discuss equity and accessibility. “But in our 2025 plan, they are themes that are integrated throughout the entire plan.”  

The current document, running more than 130 pages and clearly a work still in progress, is the product of resident volunteers, town staff and planning consultants. A Comprehensive Planning Advisory Committee (CPAC), comprising 10 resident members, pulled together the work of six subcommittees focused on each of the three hamlets as well as horses and agriculture, climate resiliency and transportation. 

“We took a long journey to get to this point, but it’s an important journey,” Youngblood said of the update. “It’s not always the destination; it’s the journey that gets you there.” 

In addition to residents working directly on the update, community input was sought in multiple ways, including a survey, written comment and public workshops. Next, the Town Board has set a public hearing for March 4 on the draft plan, which it has also referred to the county planning board as well as Bedford’s permitting and advisory bodies for comment and review. 

Calves, for her part, called the CPAC draft “fun to read if you love our town. . . . But the last 20, 30 pages are really the issues where, I think, people will want to have comments.”

In response to a question, Calves said last week that meeting the 30x30 standard would require permanently protecting an additional 1,000 acres of land and water in Bedford over the next five years. “This protected property would  not have to be owned by the town to count towards this goal,” she noted.

Money becomes a key issue in land preservation. For a brief period last year, the Town Board considered but ultimately shelved a task force’s recommendation to impose a transfer tax on high-end property sales in Bedford, the proceeds earmarked for open-space acquisition. Pushback from the real estate sales community doomed that plan, which would have supplemented the current source of open-space funds: a 2 percent slice of the town’s property-tax levy.

“There are a lot of resources out there that the town can leverage to work towards this [30x30] goal and a lot of interest from individuals to permanently protect natural resources,” Calves said. “Once natural areas are developed, altered or polluted, it is hard to get them back. I don’t think 30x30 is an impossible goal, but it will require collaboration and creativity.”

Bedford will continue to seek grants and partnerships to maximize the potential of the open-space levy, she said, noting that the town had “just acquired 13 acres and 75 percent of the cost was covered by a water-quality improvement grant from the state.” (See Reyburn Road below)

“The town Open Space Acquisition Committee can support these efforts and educate people about the value of open space and resource preservation to encourage landowners to consider putting land in permanent conservation or to donate to the organizations who work to do this in our area,” Calves said.

Not-for-profit organizations like Westchester Land Trust, Mianus River Gorge, Nature Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited, she suggested, “could provide more information and technical support to encourage property owners to collaborate with them to voluntarily place permanent protective easements on portions of their property.” 

Reyburn Road

In a demonstration of open-space acquisition at the meeting, the Town Board voted funding for the latest land purchase.

Agreeing with Calves that buying 13.36 acres in Katonah near the Muscoot Reservoir was a “great opportunity for the town and the environment,” the board authorized up to $400,000 as its share of an expected sale price of about $1.5 million.

Bedford is partnering with Westchester Land Trust to protect the property—39 and 43 Reyburn Road—from future development. It’s expected for now to be available for hiking, but any further use would require Town Board action.

In a public hearing before the board vote, Lori Ensinger and Rosemary Lee, both members of the town Open Space Acquisition Committee, and Gentian Falstrom, land protection manager at Westchester Land Trust, spoke in favor of buying the property.