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Roseville Parks and Re(:re ation Survey ................. As cities and townships in counties like Scott began to turn into bedroom communities decades ago, officials note in defense of their predecessors, many early residents lived on large-acreage lots or on lakes. Treasuring the low taxes that came with suburban life, they had little incentive to lay ambitious plans for parks. But today early landowners are aging, retiring, passing away -- and large parcels are reaching the market, even as urban sprawl is gobbling up high percentages of the most attractive land even at the farthest reaches of the county. A recent acquisition in Scott, for example, means there will be public ownership of what may be the last remaining undeveloped lakeshore on any recreational- sized lake in the entire county. At the same time, the housing boom has gone bust, creating some land-price bargains that officials wish to take advantage of before good times return and prices skyrocket. The willingness of people in Dakota earlier this decade to vote themselves a collective $20 million tax increase to save open space and farmland made a big impression on surrounding counties, experts add -- and others may follow suit. "Those referendums prove there's a demand," said Joshua Houdek, conservation organizer for the Sierra Club. But there isn't a lot of extra money to buy land. The county board in Carver was warned in November that, as things now stand, it could take 12 to 26 years before "work would go forward to develop existing parks or new park areas would be considered for acquisition," according to a memo that emerged from that session. And that's at a time when the opening of a long-awaited new freeway, Hwy. 212, is expected to bring a huge new burst of growth, creating population pressures much like those the new Minnesota River bridge created in Scott County beginning in the late 1990s. Carver County Administrator Dave Hemze said: "We're conducting a citizen survey now, partly to gauge public sentiment on whether to increase taxes for open space. But the board is a long way from making that decision. It wants to wait for the results of the survey. Page 31.