Bill Birchard

As a trustee of the Amherst Land Trust, which operates entirely with volunteers to protect rural, scenic, and open space land, I oppose this bill as it would make it financially impossible to continue our work. To date, we have saved hundreds of acres of land for public benefit. If that land were taxed, we would quickly exhaust our reserves and have no money left to do our land-saving work, as well as no money to enforce conservation and open-space restrictions on the land already protected. Thank you for your consideration.