Despite a drop in the level of matching funds from the state, the Community Preservation Act has seen more than $825,000 directed from the state to Island towns this year, with the final installment delivered this month.

Combined with the local revenues, this means town community preservation boards have about $2 million for open space, community housing, historic preservation and recreation projects.

All six Vineyard towns have voted to opt in to the state program, which was enacted in 2001. Through the Community Preservation Act, the state will match monies raised by a local property tax surcharges of up to three per cent. Town voters then decide how to spend the money.

Towns are now considering a range of new CPA applications for the coming financial year. Previously CPA money has supported everything from the historic restorations of the Ocean Park bandstand, Vanderhoop homestead, Katama Farm Barn, Tashmoo Spring building and landmark churches, to sprucing up Eastville Beach and renovating West Tisbury’s town hall. They have also shouldered the cost of some community housing projects; since the financial collapse of the private nonprofit Island Affordable Housing Fund last year, the towns, largely through CPA funds, have taken over most of the low-income rental subsidies to landlords.

The CPA program has become so attractive that now 142 towns, or 40 per cent of the state’s towns, have voted to take advantage of it. The result, however, is that the state money this year is being spread more thinly.

Making matters worse, local CPA contributions are supplemented by the state from fees received from real estate transactions statewide. But with home sales down statewide, supplements are dropping.

From 2002 through 2007, the state CPA Trust Fund matched local surcharge revenue 100 per cent, but the match has fallen in each of the following years.

Aquinnah and Chilmark adopted the act in 2001, the four other Island towns only enacted the program in 2005. All six town exempt low-income homeowners and most Island owners get an exemption on the first $100,000 of their property’s value.

This year, the average match statewide was 31.5 per cent, though Vineyard towns have all received a higher match than the average. In figuring its matching funds, the state considers population (smaller towns have an advantage) and the level of the town’s commitment to the program, so towns that have adopted the maximum 3 per cent surcharge — as all Vineyard towns have — receive relatively more.

Aquinnah, for instance, still received a 100 per cent match this year, with the state providing $70,813 to match what the town homeowners paid in their three per cent CPA tax surcharge.

Chilmark’s funds were matched 60 per cent, but the match is now less than half in the other four Island towns.

The sluggish American economy’s effect on state and local coffers has some taxpayers casting the CPA in a new light: five communities will vote next month on the program, some asking whether to stay involved, others seeking to join it.

In Scituate, for instance, the town is currently debating whether to withdraw from the act altogether, or cut its surcharge.

Belmont voters are weighing whether they can afford an override as well the CPA tax surcharge. Unlike an override, the CPA surcharge is temporary, and matched to some degree by state funds for projects that otherwise might compete for a chunk of the town budget.

Town meetings in Gosnold and Middleborough voted to advance the community preservation act question to their fall ballots; they will be deciding whether to join the program. If Gosnold chooses to adopt the CPA in November, it will be the last remaining Cape and Islands community to embrace it.

When making the October distribution in past years, the Department of Revenue has issued a preliminary estimate of the percentage match for the following year. But no such estimate was included with this year’s distribution memo, leaving towns uncertain of the bargain in the coming years.

Meanwhile, Chilmark learned this month that its community preservation committee will receive a total of $102,356 from the state, a 60 per cent match for the $170,573 coming from property owners.

In West Tisbury, the match is about 44 per cent, with the state kicking in $132,306 to the town-raised $303,534.

In Tisbury the match drops to just over 40 per cent; $153,020 from the state and $379,682 from the property owners.

Oak Bluffs will see $170,600 from the state, a 38.4 per cent match on its $444,308.

Edgartown, with the highest fund, will receive $197,515 from the state and $566,110 from the townspeople, putting its state match at just under 35 per cent.

After five years, any town can vote to repeal the CPA or reduce the surcharge. However, citizens in several communities recently voted overwhelmingly against reducing their CPA surcharge because of the benefits it has brought to their towns; involvement in the community preservation act, advocates have argued, helps fund projects that towns would either have to pay for themselves, or would simply neglect without the partial state match that makes them more cost-effective.