Community Preservation Funds Waiting for Distribution

By Seth Daniel

The first-round of Community Preservation Act (CPA) money in Chelsea has been collected from the taxpayers and amounts to around $600,000 locally.

A state match under the CPA is not yet known, but it will likely be known in November.

City Manager Tom Ambrosino said they are estimating that the state money will likely come in at a 15 percent match of what was collected – which would be $90,000.

That would make the total CPA money available in Fiscal Year 2017 to be estimated at $690,000.

The CPA Committee has begun meeting and did meet this week, but they are still getting organized.

Soon, however, it is expected that they will begin considering requests for CPA dollars this year.

“They did meet this week, but we are still in the planning stages of getting operational,” said Ambrosino. “At some point, they will submit proposal and they will have to dole out that money.”

By statue, 10 percent of the funds each have to go to historic preservation, affordable housing and open space. The remainder can be given out at the Committee’s discretion for community needs.

The City Council has the final vote on any awards.

The electorate voted overwhelmingly last November to approve the CPA, and the City has been diligently putting it in place with an aggressive schedule over the last 10 months.

Many municipalities that approved the CPA last year are still in the early planning stages and haven’t even begun to make collections on the tax bills.

The CPA is funded by an extra collection on municipal property tax bills.

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