IN YOUR CORNER

In a past editorial, the Taxpayer's Association discussed that portion of Martin County's Comprehensive Land Use Plan and Map that allows 20-acre ranchettes on a major portion of the county land west of I-95 and extending to Lake Okeechobee. We expressed alarm that this type of zoning promotes urban sprawl, destruction of green space, and the decline of agribusiness. Ultimately, this sprawling "community" demands county services, including trash pickup, police protection, schools and bussing, mail delivery, and fire and rescue, at a per capita cost far higher than those within the Urban Service District.

In past editorials we have described these problems and offered a diverse program of policies to address this concern. One policy involved using tax dollars to purchase density (development rights) and transferring same to areas within the county that are more appropriate for development. Almost prophetically, on the heels of our editorial, a representative of American Farmland Trust visited Stuart to speak on the subject of preserving our farmlands, describing how other communities have dealt with this matter. Their list of approaches included the following.

1) Purchase development rights: Requires tax money to purchase and willingness of landowner to sell.
2) Transfer development rights: Requires coordination and planning to effect transfer of rights from agricultural landowners to developer-recipients.
3) Agricultural Protection Zoning: Changing the zoning at this point to allow farming only would be a taking of property rights, creating legal turmoil between county government and the effected landowners.
4) Tax Relief: Martin County farmlands currently enjoy tax relief in the form of an agricultural exemption. Unfortunately, a good portion of the taxable value of the 20-acre ranchette would benefit from that Ag exemption, so these more-costly areas to service would be paying even less than their fair share of taxes.

We are pleased to see that the Martin County Commission is studying this issue, most recently by inviting a Palm Beach County Commissioner to speak regarding their approach and limited success. Unfortunately, this discussion seemed one dimensional in that most if not all the focus was that of the county purchasing Ag land outright as opposed to a broader approach which includes purchasing and transferring the development rights to the land and other policies.

Purchasing and/or transferring the development rights to Ag land not only gives the farmer an immediate cash boost, but it also allows agribusiness to continue. Purchasing rights can reduce the program's cost by 15-35%, while also retaining the economic benefits of that industry.

If the development rights were resold to developers to increase density in appropriate areas, the program's costs could be even further reduced. In many cases this is more desirable than outright purchase of the land, unless the County can negotiate lease-back agreements to farmers, and that sounds like more bureaucracy to us. Suffolk County, NY, has been recommended as a community that deals well with that approach. Perhaps a portion of their program can be useful to us, although we do not embrace their overall taxing policies.

We understand that our program is "running against the clock" as more and more 20-acre ranchette communities are being proposed each month.

**

We recently wrote about a concern we had with the counties GIS (Graphics Information System) We have been informed that the Property Appraiser has been working with the County on perfecting the data on this system.  This ongoing program should be useable and available on the web next year.  We were informed the we should have near perfect data soon and should be able to eliminate some of the needs for consultants.  This data will help the School Board find sites, help those that work in Real Estate, individuals that have plans for their property, EMS/Fire/Police plan routing.  We’ll address the management of this system in the future.