BOE Bancroft Plan Encore Better Received

The Haddonfield school-board makeover of the Bancroft purchase plan received a much warmer reception Thursday than a plan rolled out two weeks ago.

The new plan trims $8 million off the initial $32 million price tag for buying the 19.7-acre parcel, adjacent to the high school on Kings Highway East. And to make it even more digestible, the board projected costs in a two-phase plan that will initially cost $17.6 million, about half of the price of the plan proposed on Oct. 19.

The new offering also shelved a plan to sell offsite athletic fields on Radnor Avenue to a commercial real estate developer. That plan stirred the most criticism last month from neighbors who didn't want more housing on the site.

A crowd of about 100 spread out around a 144-seat auditorium was much kinder and gentler Thursday than an overflow crowd of 200 at the Municipal Hall two weeks ago.

"We're really price-sensitive about our taxes," said Nancy Gilick, a resident from the Mews. "And even though you say it's only going to be about another $300 a year, everything is just more and more and more. I think we're kind of maxed out. But as a community, we like the idea of going forward in stages."

The borough released a cost study for the Bancroft acquisition in September. The price was $19.52 million, $14.27 of which would be financed through tax dollars. That would mean a typical taxpayer with a home assessed at the borough average of $491,000 would pay an additional $271 a year in taxes for the next 20 years. The typical property tax bill in the borough is $12,000 yearly.

The initial school plan nearly doubled the taxpayer cost to $477.84 yearly for the typical home owner to finance $30 million of costs over 20 years. The borough plan adds $16 for every additional million dollars of costs. A similar calculation would hike the school-plan, taxpayer cost to $509.84 yearly.

The new board plan projects an annual cost for a residential property taxpayer at $318.54 over 20 years, or $6,371 dollars for each family. It also projects a Phase II of the plan for the construction of a 24,000-square-foot learning center for an additional $7.2 million. Those additional costs are not included in the $318.54 calculation.

Both phases of the new plan sheds $8 million from the original $32 million proposal two week ago by not including the cost of a new municipal library, which connects to the learning center on a rendering of the site plan released then.

The borough calculations do not include a new library and learning center.

Bill Reynolds, a member of the borough library board of trustees, did not comment on the proposal to relocate the current library, which is nearly a century old, to the Bancroft site. But he did give a reasoned thumbs-up to the revised board plan to purchase the site.

"I don't like paying taxes any more than you do Nancy," said Reynolds, who said he was born at the end of the Great Depression and has lived here for most of his life. "The annual tax bill we pay now is about half the original purchase price of our house. But we need a strong school district."

Haddonfield’s average property tax of $12,088.88 is nearly twice the state average at $7,776, according to the state Department of Community Affairs. Haddonfield has the second highest average property tax bill in Camden County. It trails Tavistock, an exclusive enclave at the tip of Haddonfield, enclosed mostly in an exclusive golf course. Haddonfield's property tax bills are 27 percent higher than Voorhees, $8,777.41, third in the county.

"When I was in high school, Merchantville was a town that rivaled Haddonfield, a strong school system, but they were regionalized," Reynolds said. "Merchantville's property values plumeted; it has kind of gone into the backwater now. We need to look at the future of the town."

Reynolds said higher taxes are the price residents pay for a community like Haddonfield.

Board President Steve Weinstein said he didn't want to "sell this plan on fear." Weinstein delivered a reasoned 15-minute pitch for the plan at the top of the two-hour meeting. 

"One thing that can't be debated is if we don't have that land, there is no other land to do it," he said. "When it's gone, it's gone. I ask you to think five, 10, 20 years ahead and think, if you do not take this opportunity will you regret it?"

The Bancroft redevelopment has been a potentially divisive topic for more than a decade. The debate has been framed by whether to use the property for more open space, a high-school expansion and more athletic fields or for tax-generating businesses or housing. Borough commissioners had favored a plan to build an assisted-living retirement complex on the site, but a public backlash about "high-density" development forced them to scrap the plan and start over last December.

The commissioners are currently considering three development options that include a public purchase, like the school board wants, market-rate townhomes or independent-living homes for senior citizens.

The property has been owned for the last 128 years by an institution established by Margaret Bancroft to rehabilitate people with developmental disabilities. Bancroft today is a national leader in treatments for brain injuries. Officials there need to upgrade facilities and have leaned toward selling its property in Haddonfield and relocating to do it.

Bancroft, a nonprofit, currently pays no municipal taxes.