The Cost of Community Services Study is a planning technique
which instructs its users to collect government income and expenses and then attempt to
designate them to specific land-use categories. It is designed to make residential development
appear to consume much more revenue in services than it pays for in taxes. The study has been
used as a land-use planning "tool" nationwide, as well as throughout Western Montana.
The COCS was developed by American Farmland Trust, an
organization specifically interested in stopping residential development. Assisting with that
development was Mark Haggerty, who is now with the radical Greater Yellowstone Coalition.
AFT was itself founded by an executive director of the anti-development Sierra Club, and is
known as part of the vast environmental network "that buys up land and sells it to the
government...while pretending to be preserving the rural farm way of life". ('Trashing the
Economy' by Ron Arnold, 425 454-7009, an exhaustive expos‚ of foundations and groups in the
environmental movement.) The COCS has clearly been fostered by the kind of people and
organizations that are dedicated to halting development and curtailing private property rights.
AFT disseminates the COCS by partnering with such groups as the
Sonoran Institute, another anti-development organization, to promote what Sonoran calls
"Community Stewardship", or similar planning forums for unsuspecting county commissioners
and planners. Sonoran has not been up-front with the fact that they are an environmental group
funded specifically for the purpose of promoting the Yellowstone to Yukon Initiative, a coalition
of at least 170 environmental groups who are determined to establish as much wilderness habitat
as possible. Neither does Sonoran reveal that Y2Y literature requests that its adherents who live
in the Y2Y area "Work at the local level to ensure that principles of conservation biology are
recognized in current management, planning, and land use decisions." The COCS ably serves to
bring Sonoran's anti-growth, private property control, Y2Y agenda directly into county planning
policy.
An example of the COCS study's anti-residential bias is found in
AFT's 'How to do a COCS' handbook when it instructs its users that after compiling county
income and expenses, they are to designate "all" of the expenses of education and most of health
and human services to the "Residential" category. This is at best a highly debatable assumption.
"Remember," the handbook then continues, "farm houses are considered residential." This is
another highly questionable assumption. The other typical COCS categories, 'Agriculture',
'Commercial' and 'Industrial', are not charged at all for education or for most of the expense of
services such as roads, sheriffs and fire control for their residences and families. The COCS bias
against the "Residential"category is obvious.
The simple fact is that residential cannot be separated from the
other categories. Residential exists predominately because of agriculture, commercial
businesses and industry. While a separate 'Residential' category consisting of home
businesses, retirees, etc. might exist in some places, it would tend to be relatively small, and
certain demographics relating to these types of residences would almost certainly minimize their
cost of services.
The COCS, by instructing that most expenses be charged to 'Residential', accomplishes exactly
what it was designed to do: limit residential development, and tend toward control of private
property rights.
Click this link to download an eleven page report in pdf format:
The Cost of Community Services Study: An Analysis,
which disputes AFT's COCS study.
Compiled by The Alternative View, 406-285-3119, mothrlod@avicom.net