Your public lands are so valuable …
Your public lands include Connecticut’s most beloved, valuable, and visited places.
Popular beaches at Hammonasset and Rocky Neck, landmarks like Gillette Castle and the Harkness estate, landscape features like Heublein Tower or Sleeping Giant, or water quality protectors like Peoples’ or the Centennial Watershed State Forests attract millions of people to Connecticut every year and are literally irreplaceable.
And yet, your public lands are unprotected …
Connecticut’s General Assembly can sell, swap, or give away these priceless public places in a backroom deal without any public input at all. Here’s a Hartford Courant story about one state property that was given away this year “in the dark of the night” in the last few hours of the 2018 legislative session. Here’s some basic information about how your public lands keep being given away.
That’s not fair – the future of Connecticut’s public lands should ALWAYS include a public voice, and the only way to ensure that is in the state constitution. Maine, Massachusetts, and New York have done it; Connecticut should too.
Vote “YES” on November 6th to protect your public lands
Voting “Yes” for public lands on the ballot would ensure transparency and a higher standard to protect your public lands. If this ballot measure passes, the following would be required BEFORE the CT General Assembly could sell, swap, or give away your public lands:
- A public hearing; and
- A 2/3rds vote by the Legislature for State Parks and Forests, Wildlife Management Areas, state-owned agricultural lands, and other valuable state-owned public lands.
Contribute to the Protect CT Public Lands Coalition
Address:
Protect CT Public Lands Coalition, Inc.
P.O. Box 205
Middlefield, CT 06455
Email: protectctpubliclands@gmail.com
Website: learn more and make an online contribution at protectctpubliclands.org
See below for additional resources, and thanks, as always, for your support of public lands and for getting involved to protect them!
Additional Resources
Ballot Information
- Description of public lands ballot question available at voting sites statewide
- Text of question on the 11.6.18 ballot (from SJ 35/Resolution Act 18-1)
Reasons to Vote “YES”
- Why Land Trusts should support protecting public lands by CFPA and CLCC
- 10 Reasons why we need a constitutional amendment to protect public lands
- Report on the problem of unprotected public lands by CT Council on Environmental Quality
Supporters
