It’s a state law that probably affects fewer people here than any other legislation. But it has the potential to impact millions of dollars in tax penalties.The 10 Mill Law is a relatively obscure one, because by its very nature it keeps large tracts of undeveloped land static, in terms of use and taxes. The goal in creating the law a half century ago was to offer property owners a monetary incentive to preserve forestland. Property owners could keep those large properties intact without bearing an increasing tax burden. Land could be passed down or sold undivided without a penalty. The classification remains with the land even if the owner changes.Properties in the program are taxed at 10 mills, no matter what rates apply to the rest of a municipality. As long as the use of the property does not change, the designation remains in place for 100 years, with a revaluation done at the 50-year mark.Two properties on Preston Mountain Road in Kent, totaling more than 1,082 acres, hit the 50-year mark this past February — the first in the state. The milestone prompted new legislation when it became apparent that none of the classified properties would be able to meet the legal requirements after revaluation.The problem is simple. In addition to a 25-acre minimum requirement, the land cannot have a value of more than $100 per acre. “None of the 10 mill properties in the state can be revalued for under $100 per acre,” said Barbara Bigos, the assessor for the towns of Salisbury and Cornwall.The technicality would take the development restriction off about 15,000 acres across the state. It could backfire by forcing some owners to sell to developers to recoup what could easily amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties on a single tract.The solution is just as simple. HB6263, An Act Concerning the Transition from the 10 Mill Program, passed unanimously in the House and Senate during the last legislative session. It offers two options. It allows 10 mill properties, as they hit the 50-year mark, to be revalued at the forestland rate, also known as the 490 program. Or, owners have the option of coming out of 10 mill without a penalty if they choose to put a permanent conservation easement on the land.Bigos called the approved legislation a compromise over an amnesty bill proposed last year and opposed by town officials across the state. The new law reflects input from property owners and town representatives seeking a workable solution.There are currently an estimated 137 10-mill properties in 37 Connecticut towns. They will all hit the 50-year mark between now and 2022. In the 1972-73 tax year, many landowners took advantage of an amnesty program and rolled property into the 490 program without penalty.Owners impacted by the change will now have to weigh conservation issues against financial ones. Bigos said taxes on the properties are not likely to rise by much. The state recommendation for taxing forest land is currently $130 per acre, well below the market value. But each town sets its own value. Cornwall, for instance, values forestland at $190 per acre. Properties in the 10 mill program have a statewide average assessment of $50 per acre.Bigos expects many landowners across the state will chose to stay in the 10 mill program — with the 490 value applied at the 50-year revaluation — because it will let them keep their options open. The same would not be true of conservation easements.Cornwall is second only to Ledyard with the highest number of 10 mill properties. The 17 properties include three state-owned parcels. The privately owned land totals about 1,450 acres. Figures calculated last year show accrued penalties that ranged from $13,781 to $429,199. The total is more than $1.6 million.“State statutes dictate a formula that takes into consideration that the property owners have been getting a big tax break over a long time,” Bigos explained.The penalty rises exponentially with the length of ownership. The formula subtracts the current fair market value from the 10 mill value. That is multiplied by the statutory rate of .005, which is then multiplied by the number of years the property was classified.While the penalties are steep, it is all relative. Its effectiveness in conserving undeveloped land depends on the owners.In Cornwall, a remaining 10 mill property was removed from the program during a recent sale. The new owner paid the $78,000 penalty. “It may seem like a lot, but when you’re talking about someone buying a $2 million property, it may not matter as much,” Bigos said. In 2007, a Cornwall landowner moved 250 acres from the 10 mill to the 490 program. The penalty was more than $260,000. The town collects $173,200 for each of five years.Another resident split off a lot to sell to a family member. The penalty nearly equaled the sale price, but profit was not likely a motivation in this case. More significantly, the 10 mill restriction is gone and the rest of the property is open for subdivision and/or development.Another property owner has been negotiating with the town on a five-year payment plan for a more-than-$91,000 penalty. His plan, Bigos said, was to rent a small portion of his property for a cell tower. “The rental income for five years would nearly cover that, he would continue to collect rent for the tower and then he could build on the rest of the land.”In this part of the state, towns with 10 mill property are Falls Village, with about 1,450 acres on three parcels; Colebrook, with two parcels and 463 acres; New Hartford with one 27-acre parcel; and Litchfield, with five parcels totaling 890 acres.
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Dick Hermans in the Oblong Bookstore on Millerton\u2019s Main Street in 1985.
Provided
For Hermans, the award has prompted some reflection about why he has spent so much of his life involved in community projects.
“I was thinking about it this morning: Why do I do what I do?” he said. “And I think no matter what I’ve done, whether it’s been school board or rail trail, I’m trying to be useful to the communities I’m associated with.”
Hermans is perhaps best known as the longtime co-founder and steward of Oblong Books in Millerton, a business that began almost by accident. He and his first wife, Holly Nelson, were living in Millerton and looking for something to do during the winter. They had been painting houses, including the Grange Hall in Millerton, a job Hermans got through his aunt, who belonged to the Grange.
At the time, Hermans was also working in insurance for his father, doing collections.
“It was fine except I was doing collections, and it really kind of left me cold,” he said.
He and Nelson began thinking about what they might do together. Nelson was an avid reader, while Hermans had studied journalism and had worked in a record store. They noticed a chain of book and record stores operating elsewhere in the Hudson Valley and decided to follow that model.
And so Oblong was born.
Dick Hermans in the Oblong Bookstore on Millerton’s Main Street in 1985.Provided
“We really learned it by the seat of our pants,” Hermans said.
The business would eventually become a beloved and integral part of Millerton’s commercial life. But although Hermans may have learned the book business as he went, his affinity for retail — and for the connections that happen across a counter — had begun much earlier.
As a child, his second-grade teacher operated a little cardboard pencil shop in the classroom, and Hermans still remembers the satisfaction of selling a pencil for a nickel.
“I really liked selling somebody a pencil for a nickel,” he recalled. “I can remember that experience, and it was so pleasant.”
Later, while living in Arizona, he helped establish a food co-op and worked at the counter.
“I kind of knew that I liked doing that kind of thing,” he said. “It’s a nice way to be pleasant with people, but without making too much commitment to them.”
His relationship with Millerton also predates Oblong. His grandparents lived in the village, and he first came to Millerton as a baby. Over the years, he has watched the town change through several generations.
He remembers a Millerton with a much broader array of businesses, when stores such as Delson’s, the Main Street department store that stood for nearly 40 years in what is now Millerton’s Antiques Center, seemed to carry almost everything a resident might need.
“You could find everything from a set of dishes to a shotgun,” he recalled.
The rise of shopping malls changed that kind of downtown retail, he said, but Millerton has remained a lively commercial village.
“For us, it’s been a great place to have business,” Hermans said. “It’s a busy village.”
For Hermans, running a store was never simply about selling books and records. It was a way of being part of a place.
Music has remained another constant. Hermans continues to sell music at Oblong and hosts the radio program “New Harmony” on WKZE. The business of selling music has changed dramatically over the years, particularly with the rise of streaming, but Hermans has adapted.
He was initially reluctant to bring vinyl records back into the store because of their expense. But about four or five years ago, he began stocking LPs again, and they have become the main form of music the store sells.
He finds that many of the customers buying them are reconnecting with music they loved years ago.
“I do best with classic albums that people may have had when they were young,” he said. “And now that they’re retired, they want to hear it again.”
Hermans still reviews between 700 and 1,200 new music releases each week through the store’s distributor, Alliance Entertainment, carefully deciding what belongs on Oblong’s shelves.
That same commitment to place has led Hermans into a wide range of community projects. His work with the Harlem Valley Rail Trail is among the efforts he mentions when reflecting on his years of civic involvement. He has also served on the school board and has been involved with the Millerton Business Alliance and the Irondale Schoolhouse. He is now involved with The New Pine Plains Herald, which he sees as complementary to the work of The Millerton News and The Lakeville Journal.
“I really think that the important thing about this award is that people understand what a newspaper does to connect them to their community,” he said. “And if that means anything to their lives, they gotta support it.”
Hermans knew Mary Lou and Robert Estabrook and remembers them as people who were deeply conscious of their responsibilities to the community.
“They were really nice folks,” he said. “They were very conscious of what their role in the community was.”
There is, in fact, still plenty on his plate. Hermans admits he needs to scale back because he has taken on more than his current abilities can comfortably accommodate.
“To be given this award is very special,” he added. “But I don’t feel like I’m done.”
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Adamah Farm crew members planning out the day’s tasks on a late September day.
Janna Siller
Over my 15 years of growing vegetables in Falls Village, I’ve exerted my will over all kinds of conditions, from drought to humidity to crows with a taste for cantaloupe. That’s what farming is all about. You zip around the field, hopping on and off tractors, moving hoses and chasing weeds, all in an effort to arrange conditions in favor of your crops. It is the crops’ job to gulp up sunlight and move water through their stems, to transform solar energy into your next pesto or ratatouille or butternut squash soup. It is the job of the farmer to irrigate just enough but not too much, to slice dandelion leaves without damaging delicate cabbage roots, to pander and pamper and stay in tune with what plants need to thrive.
The easy part of farming is trusting plants’ resilience. I have seen bright green shoots barrel ahead out of a plant torn to shreds by hail. I’ve watched wilty, heat-stressed seedlings turn rigid overnight and greet the next morning with vigor. The hard part is letting go of what you can’t control. As our crops lapped up Friday’s gentle sunshine and I considered the weekend forecast, I imagined roots holding tight to wet earth and branches supporting each other in sideways, pelting rain. I made sure all of our storage crops were already harvested and tucked away. I battened down the sides of our greenhouses and wished the remaining field crops good luck.
The nor’easter didn’t materialize too dramatically in our corner of New England. A few broken branches and debris blown about, nothing like the July Fourth storm that sent half a tree crashing onto the deer fence and left crates of fresh veggies in coolers without power.
Fall storage crop harvests amid soil building cover crops at Adamah Farm in Falls Village. Janna Siller
Farming is an exercise in acceptance. To do it well and return year after year, you have to balance hubris and humility. The prize can often be a certain equanimity, a training in the art of moving into the next day even when the last one scrambled all your plans.
Epic change is not always about the unexpected. It also comes like clockwork on the seasonal calendar. As I type, the last of summer’s watermelons wait naively on the vine for a few hot days to finish ripening. Broccoli are holding their leaves wide as they did in June and July, only to find that the hours of sunlight decrease with each earlier sunset. Plants can’t pick up and go south or call the manager to order a bonus round of sunshine. Their growth slows and they get a resigned look to the hue of their leaves, so different from the frenzied growth of summer.
The release of fall is not tragic or gloomy. It is not an ending because so many fall tasks are about setting up for the new beginnings in spring.
We turn the vines that yielded thousands of pounds of fruit into the soil, where healthy microbes feast on their rotting stems. Then we plant cover crops — a mix of cereal grains like rye and oats and legumes like peas, vetch and clover. Cover crops hold the soil and its nutrients in place over winter, feeding the soil food web and adding organic matter that next season’s crops will need to grow.
We sort sprinklers and repair hoses. We inventory tarps. We take notes about which plants did well where and how we might try a new approach for this or that. We stack crates of cured garlic and onions and winter squash in a cool, dark room.
We save seeds from tomatoes and beans and lettuce, carefully labeling each variety for next season’s long, sunny days.
Janna Siller is the farm director at Adamah, a community farm in Falls Village offering CSA shares, educational programs and a food access program.
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