2015 Statewide CPA Trust Fund Distribution Announced

Nov. 17, 2015: The Massachusetts Department of Revenue (DOR) has released the Community Preservation Trust Fund distribution for each CPA municipality. The revenue from this year's trust fund distribution comes from two sources: document recording fees collected over the past 12 months at the state's Registries of Deeds, and a transfer of $10 million from the state's FY2015 budget surplus. In total, more than $36 million was distributed to the 156 communities eligible for a distribution this year.

All CPA communities received a 29.7% match on round one of the trust fund distribution this year. Communities that adopted CPA with a full 3% local property tax surcharge received a higher percentage. Click on the links below for details on this year's distribution and a way to view the specific amounts for each community.

> SPREADSHEET: Click here for the CPA Trust Fund distribution amount for each municipality <

>> PDF VERSION: Click here for the CPA Trust Fund distribution amount for each municipality <<

PLEASE NOTE: When downloading the above spreadsheet, some users of Internet Explorer have reported that a dialog box appears asking for a user name and password. If this occurs, hit "cancel" and be patient while the spreadsheet downloads. Users of Firefox, Chrome and Safari have reported no such issue.

For the PDF vesion, you may have to zoom out considerably after downloading in some browsers. 

According to a statement from DOR, this year's CPA Trust Fund distribution amount for most communities was adjusted due to an update to FY2015 data after last year's distribution was made. The adjustment was necessary because the surcharge percentage was incorrectly calculated in one community and another community did not notify DOR that they had adopted CPA and were therefore not included in last year's distribution.

The Coalition is pleased that we were successful in our nine month effort to obtain additional funding for today's distribution. Although collections for CPA at the Registries of Deeds have increased slightly over the past year, today's distribution would have been approximately 26% lower had we not made the case for the additional $10 million in funding. We are grateful to the state legislature and the Baker Administration for once again reserving surplus budget funds for CPA, the third consecutive year of such transfers. Over the past three years, our advocacy on behalf of CPA has resulted in $46.4 million in additional funds for the CPA Trust Fund.

To determine the exact distribution each community receives, DOR follows a formula in the CPA legislation that calls for up to three rounds of trust fund distributions. Click here to learn more about how the statewide trust fund distribution works.

Statistics From This Year's Distribution: 

Total municipalities qualifying for a trust fund distribution on November 15, 2015: 156

Match percentage received by municipalities with a CPA local property tax surcharge of less than 3%: 29.7% 

Match percentage received by municipalities with the maximum CPA local property tax surcharge of 3%: Range of 30.1% to 100% 

Number of municipalities receiving a full 100% match: 10

Total payout in first round distribution: $31,499,506

Total payout in second round distribution: $3,192,736

Total payout in third round distribution: $1,653,710

Total payout for all rounds: $36,345,952

Further Resources:

• See the month-to-month collections of document recording fees by the Registries of Deeds for the CPA Statewide Trust Fund. (Note that these figures do not reflect the $10 million in state budget surplus funds added to this year's state CPA Trust Fund distribution).