By Deborah Bowers
Harford County, Md. has dropped from 8th to 9th place in a national survey that ranks the nation’s most successful farmland preservation programs, and is the only county in the ranking that is not funding its program. York County, Pa. overtook Harford County by preserving 714 acres in its farmland program since last September, while the Harford program stood still in the same period. The survey is conducted each year by Bowers Publishing, Inc., of Street, Md., which publishes the online newsletter Farmland Preservation Report.
The survey rates 12 counties in four states that have exceeded 40,000 acres preserved. Five of the counties are in Maryland, and include Harford, Baltimore, Frederick, Carroll and Montgomery. Montgomery is in 2nd place, with 71,622 preserved acres.
Harford has 45,008 acres of farmland preserved through the state and county-operated farmland preservation programs, and in the state Rural Legacy Program and Maryland Environmental Trust.
The survey also examines whether a county protects agricultural lands through zoning restriction. Harford is listed as not having effective agricultural zoning. In Maryland only Baltimore and Montgomery are listed as having effective farmland protection through zoning.
Lancaster County, Pa., leads the nation in acres preserved for agricultural use, with 85,510 acres preserved through that county’s program and through the Lancaster Farmland Trust, a private nonprofit organization.
In York County, where development pressure from Harford and Baltimore Counties in Maryland has eaten away at the Piedmont countryside over the last 40 years, 240 farms and 37,654 acres are preserved to date. Recently local money committed to the program has dropped dramatically, however, to $100,000 last year and $200,000 this year. Administrator Patty McCandless said the program will receive $841,000 from the state and about $323,000 in federal Farm and Ranchland Protection Program funds.
Harford is the only county among the 12 surveyed that has zero local dollars to spend on new easements. Without local dollars to match, it will not be able to get significant funding from state or federal farmland protection programs. Most counties in the survey have more than $3 million to spend on farmland preservation.
Billy Boniface, president of the Harford County Council, said he worries that Maryland’s deficit will affect counties even more than it has already, with cutbacks on local school construction dollars and road maintenance. He said he is unwilling to borrow money in the bond market for farmland preservation.
“My concerns are, it’s very difficult to go off into the bond market in addition to the IPA payments, without another funding source,” Boniface said.
Other counties in Maryland budgeted funds for their farmland programs. Carroll County, which rose from 5th to 4th place in the ranking by preserving 4,178 acres over the last 12 months, has $13.7 million authorized by Carroll County Commissioners. Baltimore County has about $3 million allocated, and the Montgomery County Council authorized borrowing $4 million over the next two years for its farmland program, in addition to $2 million on hand, the survey found. Frederick County budgeted $3.8 million.
Harford County’s program was once the most active in the Report’s ranking, but the local program was set up to buy easements with installment purchase agreements (IPAs) and to run only on revenues from a local real estate transfer tax enacted in 1993. Those revenues are dramatically affected by washed up home sales. That leaves Harford’s once innovative program in the doldrums.
Harford’s local program, which began in 1993, is paying out interest annually to farmers who agreed to accept the installment payments, and who will receive a lump sum principal payment at the end of a 15 or 20-year period. The Harford real estate transfer tax is bringing in about $2 million annually – just enough to make the payments on existing IPA contracts with farmers. For the third year, Harford will not open an application round. There was only one state-purchased easement in the last 12 months, on a 82-acre farm, according to program director Bill Amoss.
Harford will have some preservation activity in the next few years through a $1.3 million grant to the Deer Creek Rural Legacy Area from the state’s Rural Legacy Program awarded last month. Most, if not all of that money will be spent to preserve agricultural lands, but only within the Deer Creek RLA which runs along the length of Deer Creek in northern Harford. In 2009, Harford’s gain in preserved acres came from settlements of the program’s last, and largest offer round in 2008.
So, why do we continue to have the staff to administer a program that has not had funding for the last couple of years and no money for the current year and next few years? What exactly does the staff do then? I really wonder about the benefits of this program that pays out millions for ground that does not pass muster for any development potential (bad soils, sloping ground, poor location and poor real estate potential, etc)but pays in part based upon the value of the ground as a developed parcel?
So, why do we continue to have the staff to administer a program that has not had funding for the last couple of years and no money for the current year and next few years? What exactly does the staff do then? I really wonder about the benefits of this program that pays out millions for ground that does not pass muster for any development potential (bad soils, sloping ground, poor location and poor real estate potential, etc)but pays in part based upon the value of the ground as a developed parcel?
I agree, how much staff funding is going into this program which is at a stand still…just like the permit folks at the county building.
It’s unfortunate that there is no money for ag preservation at this time, but at least residential development in the rural areas has slowed also due to the economy. (Actually, the slow housing market is what is causing the lack of funding for ag preservation, because it is funded by the transfer tax).
Fortunately there are non-profit organizations like the Harford Land Trust that are trying to fill the void with private funds. If you are interested in preserving farmland, open space, and environmentally sensitive areas, you should consider supporting them.
i attempted to put my small acreage, 23 acres more or less, into the program, and was told it did not qualify. I gave it a shot.
“through a $1.3 million grant to the Deer Creek Rural Legacy Area from the state’s Rural Legacy Program awarded last month.”
Does anyone out there realize that this is your tax money, extorted by the state? It’s not free. It used to be yours. If someone came to you and asked for a donation to spend $1.3 Million to preserve agricultural land along Deer Creek, how much would you willingly donate?
Keep in mind that of this $1.3 Million of your money, it’s not likely that all of it is being spent to preserve land. I would guess that a good portion of it is being spent to employ political hangers-on in make-work jobs at inflated salaries, filing reports on land preservation for the politicians who got them their jobs.
All but 3% of the Rural Legacy Program funds go to the landowners who want to protect their land. That 3% pays for the enormous amount of legal paperwork required of any land transaction. Regarding staff time: Harford Co. has 43,000-plus acres under conservation easement, nearly all was paid per-acre. You don’t put that kind of investment into a program and then walk away. You have to make sure the terms of the easements are being met. Bill Amoss and Ned Sayre are not sitting on their hands – they have plenty of work to do. I didn’t put any opinion into the news story, but here, I can: I find it interesting that some people complain about money being spent on land preservation. Maybe they won’t complain so much, then, when the farm next to them gets 100 houses and a new school has to be built. I wonder how much that will cost?
If we had a county government that did its job, they’d hold development to reasonable levels. But they’re owned by the developers so we need to extort $1.3 Million from the citizens to buy off landowners because the county government won’t hold the county to reasonable development.
Now the land preservation got a grant of $1.3 Million; that developer friend of Craig’s just got a $14 Million special funding deal to build houses we don’t need. So the builders are out-funding the preservers by 10-1 as I see it. It’s all a shell game, the taxpayer ends up paying on one side or the other. These feel-good grants to save farmland are a joke, a smoke screen to divert us from what’s really going on.
I agree, the grants are a form of buying our way out of bad zoning. The state (ie, taxpayers)is having to make up for lack of restrictive zoning at the local level. This has been going on since 1977 when the state farmland program was established. But many people are against restrictive zoning because they believe it affects the wealth, or rights, of landowners. So that’s the situation. In the case of Harford County officials, they have steadfastly refused to further restrict development in the so-called agricultural zone (because of constitutents I describe above). And this is why they strongly support spending millions on farmland preservation.
Don’t the owners of that hundred acre parcel have every right to develop the land, or that property right gone?
Help me understand what work needs to be done when there is no funding available, and given these lean times, is that overhead well spent?
Well, somebody’s got to monitor the easements and deed restrictions on the 45,000+ acres preserved in Harford County. That is a huge chunk of land. I was kind of surprised to hear that there were only 2 people doing that. What about when someone in the program wants to use a family conveyance, or make some kind of change to their property?
Of course, there are always going to be people who say we don’t need an ag preservation program, but they are surely a minority. I think that the results of the primary election as it relates to the County Council (especially in districts B, C, and D) show that the voters support farmland preservation over rampant residential development in the rural parts of our county.
If the many people of Harford would pay more attention to the shenanigans of our handful of County politicians responsible for allowing rampant development through indiscriminate zoning, there would be less rural and ag land requiring rescue. There would be lower taxes as we would not be paying for the end results of unfettered developmnent. A problem is zoning meetings and hearings are historically poorly attended as it would appear no one cares until their personal property boundaries are threatened. Too many people do not realize that if you enjoy a more rural lifestyle, you must be ever diligent to protect it. Basically, all undeveloped land is under constant siege. The public also doesn’t realize that unfortunately, it is the special interest financially-backed County Council that has the final say on zoning, not the experts in the zoning department. As has been obvious over the years, Harford’s politicians do not ascribe to any smart growth initiatives and we will all be paying more and more taxes as a result. This pattern will be repeated as long as we continue to put those same people back into office.
It will also be interestng to see just how much of the “preserved” or donated trust land will actually stay that way. There is a tendency to declare land excess or to buy land at top dollar only to hand it over to developers or to trade it off in some back door deal.
As far as the County employees go, the problem is not with the lower paid ‘working’ staff, but the constantly growing, highly paid and politically well-connected administrative help the County Executive has been accumulating. Those hired with, of course, the County Council’s approval.
Logically, if we got rid of the fat, more dollars would be freed to do the work of the public and in its best interests.