The other title for this article was "Ipswich cottage community is sold to owners, sustaining aid to schools." My comment follows ...
Sale of Little Neck to cottage owners finally goes through - The Boston Globe.
Little Neck, the Ipswich summer cottage community at the center of a decades-long legal battle, has officially been sold to 166 property owners.
The $31.4 million transaction was completed Aug. 10, ending one of the nation’s oldest land trusts, established in 1660 by settler William Paine.
Paine’s will stated that the land should never be sold and that rental income should benefit the Ipswich public schools. But an Essex Probate Court judge ruled last December that the trust could be changed to allow the sale of Little Neck to cottage owners, who have formed a condominium association.
A group of residents opposed to the change appealed the judge’s ruling to the state Appeals Court. But a single justice of that court upheld the probate judge’s decision, clearing the way for the sale.
Catherine Savoie, a lawyer for the residents, said she still plans to file an appeal with the Supreme Judicial Court.
With the Little Neck sale, a former board of trustees called the Feoffees of the Ipswich Grammar School has been dissolved and replaced by a seven-member panel, the New Feoffees. After expenses related to the land closing and past bills owed by the former feoffees, the trust to benefit the schools will have $25.4 million in assets, according to a statement issued by the New Feoffees.
Kathy McCabe can be reached at [email protected]
How sad. How very shortsighted, to turn over to a private group of tenants, at a bargain-basement price, in a down market, an appreciating and glorious asset that was gifted on a PERMANENT basis to his entire community by a foresighted and thoughtful citizen.
Some well-paid advocates caused the community to solve a half-vast short term problem -- the failure to collect market rents over the last 20 or 30 years out of 300 -- with a vast "solution" which ultimately accrues to the benefit of the buyers and their heirs, forever, and the detriment of the community.
Privatizing public assets -- land -- is a poor idea. Just collect the land rent.
Smart communities finance their public spending by collecting significant portions of the land rent.
Mr. Payne got it right, and 300+ years of Ipswich students benefited. Now lawyers, and stock brokers, and investment managers and the former tenants become the primary beneficiary -- the first group for as long as the corpus lasts -- I predict that the buying power of the trust income will be negligible within one generation -- and the former tenants will be fondly remembered by their descendants, as the ones who "put one over" on the town of Ipswich.
I hope Ipswich will engrave the names of those who let this happen in some prominent place, with the words "never forget!" The state officials who cooperated ought to be included.
Ours is not the ultimate generation.
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