The Conservation Program Handbook: A Guide for Local Government Land Acquisition - Softcover

Tassel, Sandra

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1597266663 ISBN 13: 9781597266666

Verlag: Island Press, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Between 1994 and 2008, American voters approved almost $32 billion for local land conservation. However, there was at that time no resource available to guide officials as they implemented the voters' mandates. "The Conservation Program Handbook" was written in response to numerous requests to The Trust for Public Land for guidance from community leaders who wanted to know how to effectively conserve their iconic landscapes. "The Conservation Program Handbook" is a manual that provides all of the information - on a broad spectrum of topics - that conservation professionals are likely to require. It compiles and distills advice from professionals involved in successful conservation efforts across the country, including a list of 'best practices' for the most critical issues conservationists can expect to face.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sandra J. Tassel is president of Look at the Land, Inc., a private conservation consulting firm based in Maryland. She has been involved in land conservation throughout her career. Prior to becoming a consultant, Tassel was the director of The Trust for Public Land office in Colorado and was a founding board member of the Colorado Coalition of Land Trusts.

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The Conservation Program Handbook

A Guide for Local Government Land Acquisition

By Sandra Tassel

ISLAND PRESS

Copyright © 2009 The Trust for Public Land
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-59726-666-6

Contents

About Island Press, 
Title Page, 
Copyright Page, 
FOREWORD, 
PREFACE, 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, 
CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION, 
CHAPTER II - LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR PROTECTING LAND, 
CHAPTER III - ADVISORY COMMITTEES, 
CHAPTER IV - STAFFING, 
CHAPTER V - PROJECT SELECTION, 
CHAPTER VI - CRITERIA, 
CHAPTER VII - IDENTIFICATION AND APPLICATION POLICIES AND PROCESS, 
CHAPTER VIII - DUE DILIGENCE AND DOCUMENTATION, 
CHAPTER IX - LEVERAGE AND PARTNERSHIPS, 
CHAPTER X - TRANSACTION DESIGN, 
CHAPTER XI - LAND MANAGEMENT AND STEWARDSHIP, 
CHAPTER XII - COMMUNICATIONS, 
CHAPTER XIII - CONCLUSION, 
ENDNOTES, 
APPENDIX 1, 
APPENDIX II, 
RESOURCES, 
INDEX, 
Island Press Board of Directors, 

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

ON ELECTION DAY, a community passes a measure that will fund a new land conservation program. The supporters of this measure celebrate, go to sleep, and wake up happy the next day. However, as they pick up the champagne bottles and recycle the campaign posters, they start to realize that a new challenge lies ahead. Now that the voters have approved the funding to protect cherished land, a program must be created to spend the allocated monies in the most efficient and productive way possible. These conservationists have pressing and important work to do.

In some communities, of course, the people who work to pass the measure understand before the vote that getting money is only the beginning. The people who design a program most often start their work by looking to established programs for advice. They collect sample documents, legislation, and policy manuals and use these as a basis for their new program. However, this approach has its pitfalls. For one thing, it is time-consuming, and, as any conservationist can tell you, time lost equals land lost, especially in areas where the pressure for development is intense.

A more serious drawback of this approach is that the programs used as models may not be the best ones to emulate. People who are launching a new program may not know all the results produced by the agency whose procedures are being used as a model. Thus they may reproduce expensive mistakes, unnecessary bureaucracy, or unproductive policies, and they risk perpetuating ineffective practices. A program can be large or well established without being a good model to follow. For these reasons, it might be wiser, especially for a small, new entity, not to use other agencies as models.

A similar dilemma confronts people who manage existing programs and want to assess their past performance or evaluate ways to improve their future efforts. Community leaders and program staff search for appropriate measurement techniques and methods. Until now, it appeared that the only valid approach was to compare procedures and progress with those of other agencies. But, in a similar way, you cannot really know whether the comparison is valid.

Programs used as
models by new programs
may not be the best ones
to emulate.

THE PURPOSE OF THIS PUBLICATION

This handbook, produced by The Trust for Public Land (TPL), seeks to eliminate the need for original research by local government programs that will be creating or upgrading policies to guide public investments in land for a range of natural, cultural, and recreational purposes. It presents the results of extensive investigations into local land acquisition agencies around the United States. To create this publication, we studied communities of various sizes with programs that protect many kinds of natural resources. However, this book is not merely a compilation of sample documents and a list of the techniques currently in use. Instead, experienced land conservation experts from around the country, led by a team of TPL staff, with experience in local government, land trusts, planning, law, and real estate, have provided their wisdom and advice to advance land protection work at the local government level. Their input and the information from the communities that were studied have been distilled into the recommendations you will find throughout this publication. (See Appendix I for the names of the interviewees.)

Both common and unusual strategies for conservation success were studied in order to create the practices we recommend here for local government land conservation programs. These strategies have been proven to yield good results and can therefore be trusted as cornerstones for new programs. Each key chapter provides a list of best practices, which present essential recommendations and show how at least one successful program has approached the chapter's topic.

The Trust for Public Land, the funders, the author, and all the contributors want to help citizens, elected officials, agency staff, and nonprofits involved in land protection to establish as many good acquisition programs as they can, as quickly as possible. Doing so will protect more of this country's special places by saving public dollars and making those dollars available more rapidly.

Securing the passage of a funding referendum is a huge challenge for most communities. It is the subject of a useful reference work, The Conservation Finance Handbook, also published by TPL. This new publication begins where that handbook leaves off: it discusses the practices that follow the success of the funding measure and serves as a useful guide for reviewing or assessing established programs.

Much of the work described here can be done before the election. Efforts to shape the program beforehand may actually strengthen the cause and create greater momentum for voter approval. Elected officials, citizens, and local government staff frequently draft language to guide the implementation of a program before the measure. You can use this handbook to guide the creation of the implementation steps in advance. If you do, it may give the voting public confidence that the planned program will be effective, accountable, and consistent with the goals described during the campaign.

USE AND ADAPT WHAT YOU NEED FROM EACH CHAPTER

In an attempt to cover all common elements, this handbook includes some information that applies only to certain parts of the country. This is a diverse nation, governed by diverse state and local governments that follow their own laws. Not all topics are relevant to all communities or programs, nor is the order in which they are presented always right for a given community or program, so use what you can. Also, although this handbook was written for local governments, many of its recommendations are applicable to state programs as well.

Depending on the capacities of government where you live or work, you may find that this handbook addresses topics that seem unnecessary or irrelevant. However, if you are starting, expanding, restructuring, or making significant changes in a program—such as adding staff for the first time—we suggest that you examine each chapter with an open mind. You may find techniques or approaches that will improve your operations. Improved functioning means more conservation per dollar and programs that better meet conservation objectives.

WHAT IS A GOOD PROGRAM?

To develop the best practices that are recommended in this publication, we had to define the overarching program characteristics we hoped to reproduce and encourage. Broadly speaking, the objective was to find and analyze agencies that are successfully protecting resources, regardless of their particular local goals and objectives. More specifically, we focused on the three qualities listed below as the fundamental definition of a good acquisition program. Our best-practices recommendations are based on programs that exhibited the following characteristics:

Effectiveness. Effective programs are achieving the purposes for which they were created and funded. Often these purposes are set forth in a park or open-space master plan, or in another document that was the foundation of the finance measure. Effective programs spend their acquisition funds strategically on the best possible projects, protected properties are properly managed, and the public benefits as promised. The protection tools these programs use are the ones most appropriate for the resource type, the real estate market, and the regional political realities.

Efficiency. The efficiency of a program is determined by the proportion of public funding actually invested in conservation and stewardship, as opposed to many other possible and necessary expenses, such as salaries, equipment, and other overhead. Efficient programs leverage their funding through locally appropriate mechanisms such as matching funds, bargain sales, purchases of less-than-fee interests in real estate (such as conservation easements), and partnerships. Each taxpayer dollar achieves its maximum conservation effect through careful management of the program's limited monies.

Respect. Respect for a program reflects both the program's conservation successes and the relationship it has built with the community it serves. The long-term survival of the program and its ability to secure ongoing funding depend on public perception. Respected programs feature policies that are responsive, respectful, and realistic. These gain support from voters, elected officials, funders, partners, and landowners.

The author sought out programs around the country that exhibited these three attributes so that their policies and procedures could be analyzed. Conservation leaders provided the names of local agencies they perceived as fitting this profile. Twenty-two of these agencies plus several nonprofit conservation organizations are featured as case studies to provide true stories from programs that have successfully gone through their startup phases and appear to match the definition of good programs, or have especially useful approaches to specific issues. In many chapters, points are clarified by case studies, by advice from an expert on a particular challenge, or by examples showing how one community implemented a specific best practice.

GATHERING THE DATA

Best practices were developed from information gathered in one-on-one interviews with community leaders, public employees, elected officials, land trust staff, and transaction consultants around the country. In addition, insights into the most effective methods of acquiring land were gathered from staff at several conservation nonprofits that were involved directly in land protection transactions, from experts who have advised new programs during their startup phases and by examining documents from dozens of other programs. (A complete list of interviewees and programs studied can be found in Appendices I and II.)

Thus, these interviews with agency staff and experts provided the basis for the recommendations that follow. These recommendations allow the post-election-day celebration to continue without concern. If they are incorporated into policy and action, they will produce the first transaction closing—and, in its wake, a new celebration party—more quickly. They can also serve as reliable yardsticks to measure the effectiveness, efficiency, and responsiveness of existing programs.

We decided not to write about failures, missed opportunities, or errors—no matter how sad or illustrative they were—even though we did study such situations. Rather, this publication focuses on the lessons that can be learned from their possibly disappointing results. To help your program avoid the pitfalls that have made other programs less successful than they might have been, this publication presents advice in a generally positive form, without detailing the mishaps from which the lessons have been derived.

Numerical and statistical data were collected with the assistance of Yoko Matsumoto, a graduate student at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Administration, who conducted a mail survey of 140 counties with park and open space programs and subsequent phone conversations. The results of her research were summarized in an unpublished report titled "Local Land Conservation Efforts: A Study of Selected County Programs in the United States." Excerpts from this report are part of several chapters.

GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS

In the interviews for this handbook, we found both good news and bad news for this publication. The good news? People were eager to share the lessons and the wisdom that came from their experiences. And, by and large, the programs conserve properties that both shape community character and are important to citizens. The bad news for this handbook and its readers is that the land protection methods used by these communities are as diverse as the resources, cultures, and histories of the nation's towns, cities, and countryside. Thus the experts' advice could not be synthesized into one recipe for success that could be used everywhere. However, their suggestions can be brought together in a menu of options. In the chapters that follow, we present these options. If more than one approach produces good results, we have provided both, knowing that local customs, political style, and other factors will determine the choice in any one jurisdiction.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Good programs share certain traits. Although policies and politics vary greatly around the country, the most exemplary programs share some universal values. These principles guided the development of the implementation strategies and procedures that we recommend here. Though the best practices sections show how successful programs do their conservation work, the general principles described in this chapter show why certain procedures and policies are in place. The principles that you will read below come from the recommendations of experts and from the many warnings and stories we heard in the interviews. Since these principles are central to almost all the good programs we examined, they are acknowledged throughout this handbook.

Guiding Principles

Balance between flexibility and accountability
Fairness to all parties
Transparent processes
Clear procedures
Good value to the community
Public involvement
Responsiveness to stakeholders

EXPLANATION OF THE GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Communities manifest these general principles as they work toward their land protection objectives. It is worthwhile to explore the meanings and implications of these principles, because they underlie the best practices for implementation.

Balance between flexibility and accountability . There may be tension between, on the one hand, sufficient flexibility to operate in the private real estate market and, on the other hand, accountability, which is important whenever public funds are involved. A commitment to a balance between the two helps communities build good reputations with landowners and with project partners who help the program achieve maximal effectiveness and efficiency and use public monies wisely.

Programs that overemphasize accountability can find it difficult to spend their money because the leaders are afraid to make the wrong choices. Project selection and acquisition become complicated. Some preservation opportunities may be lost, and some acquisitions may become unnecessarily expensive. Sometimes landowners who are ready to sell cannot determine the real likelihood of a public purchase of their property and therefore look for quicker private sales. The cost to the public rises because sellers who wait through lengthy procedures expect to be compensated for the time and other costs involved in a sale to a public agency.

On the other hand, agencies that focus too much on accommodating landowners will be too flexible in their efforts to make a deal. They may risk both the reputations of their programs and the public money they spend. Lack of caution can result in unwise expenditures, which affect a property's ability to serve its public purpose or a program's ability to protect natural resources in the future. Balance represents a point somewhere between a "shoot-from-the-hip" strategy and "analysis paralysis."

Fairness to all parties. Fairness means that leaders value a program's reputation and the quality of key relationships. This is often manifested through a "willing seller" policy that forbids the use of condemnation. Admittedly, if the program works only with landowners who voluntarily agree to sell, relationships must be built and patience must be exercised to complete a strategic suite of acquisitions.

The principle of fairness also implies that the program will not try to wring every last dollar from negotiations with landowners or with other public or private entities that are partners in transactions or management. A desire to be fair will also reduce the urge to get every possible concession from other parties. Respectful collaboration with other governmental conservation programs, private land trusts, and citizens groups pays valuable long-term dividends. Fair dealing promotes long-term success and acceptance of the program by landowners, funders, partners, voters, and constituents.

Transparent processes. Trust is built throughout the community when everyone knows how decisions are made. A set of rules is established to serve the public good, and those rules are applied universally, regardless of the social status of the landowner or in whose district the land is located. An additional indicator of transparency is that anyone can easily find out the rules that govern the program and how those rules are applied. However, this does not mean that landowners' private financial and legal matters should be discussed publicly beyond legal disclosure requirements.

Clear procedures. Successful programs generally have a straightforward and predictable system of steps for each transaction, from project identification through closing. A description of the program's procedures should be made available to everyone and must be easy to understand. This principle does not promote utter simplicity, but it discourages the creation of a maze of regulations that hinder the participation of landowners, partners, and the public. Beginning with the formation of the advisory committee (if one is planned), each step of creating the program should be publicized when it is completed, and its benefit to the public should be made clear.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Conservation Program Handbook by Sandra Tassel. Copyright © 2009 The Trust for Public Land. Excerpted by permission of ISLAND PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Island Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1597266663
• ISBN 13: 9781597266666
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Sprache: Englisch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 264
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar