Posted on 11/28/2003 9:24:44 AM PST by toddst
Jim Dwyer received the highest amount paid per acres for his 205-acre farm on Houston Antioch Road, and used his $864,444 PDR payment to buy another 127-acre farm across the county line in Bourbon County.
Lexington's farmland preservation program has plowed through more than $25 million in the past two years, protecting more than 10,000 acres of rural Fayette County from future development.
More than $15 million has been doled out to area landowners since July, setting a blistering pace of preservation that few expected from a 3-year-old program designed to preserve 50,000 acres over 20 years.
"We're starting to see big blocks of protected farmland, and that's exciting," said Margaret Graves, chairwoman of the Rural Land Management Board, which oversees the preservation program.
Despite progress, the Purchase of Development Rights (PDR) program faces significant hurdles in coming months and remains under attack from opponents and farmers alike.
The most pressing issue is money.
Year-old PDR applications from about 40 farmers who own more than 3,000 acres haven't been considered, and most of those requests won't be processed any time soon, Graves said.
The program has less than half a million left to spend, and its next appropriation of money from the city probably won't come before July.
A little less than half of the $25 million spent by PDR so far was local money, with the balance coming from the state's tobacco settlement funds and federal grants. More state and federal money is available, but not before local matching money is appropriated.
In the meantime, PDR supporters are pondering new ways to raise funds, rather than gamble that city leaders will honor a campaign pledge by Mayor Teresa Isaac to spend $2 million a year on PDR.
Everything from bond issuances to new dedicated taxes will be considered by the land management board in coming months, Graves said. The goal is to find a steady, reliable source of money that isn't subject to political whims.
That hasn't been the case so far. The program didn't get a full $2 million this year, thanks to budget cuts, and Vice Mayor Mike Scanlon is gunning for more changes next year.
Scanlon is attempting to garner support among Urban County Council members for a resolution requiring that each dollar spent on PDR be matched with a dollar for redevelopment in the downtown area.
"Every time we stop development, we must encourage it somewhere else," Scanlon said. "We have to have the yin and the yang of development."
He points out that the county's Rural Land Management Plan, which recommended the PDR program in 1999, also says the city should "aggressively promote" development projects on vacant and underused urban land that would "reduce the need for utilizing agricultural land to accommodate growth."
The plan suggests such actions as upgrading infrastructure, providing development incentives and financial assistance programs, and revising regulations.
Amount needed times two
Given the city's budget crunch, it seems unlikely that an additional $2 million per year could be found for downtown development, which suggests Scanlon is supporting a 50 percent cut in PDR's budget, Graves said.
"I'm supportive of them getting funding, but I don't want to see our money cut in half," she said. "Downtown has received a lot of investment recently, in terms of courthouses and lights and sidewalks."
The city council has also approved new regulations for development in the city's core, and a rash of new residential projects have been announced in and around downtown.
"I know the PDR zealots are going to hear 'cut, cut, cut,' but that's not what I'm saying," Scanlon said. "They (PDR and downtown development) should be fiscally equal, whether it's a cut or an increase."
Councilwoman Gloria Martin, who represents much of rural Fayette County, doesn't like Scanlon's idea. She points out that past studies have shown that taxpayers outside the county's urban area have been subsidizing services within the city since the county and city merged in 1974.
Some of the county's farmers think Scanlon's suggestion is outright ridiculous.
One of the main goals of the PDR program, they contend, is reimbursing farmers for the economic loss incurred when city leaders lowered the value of their land in 1999 by setting the minimum lot size in rural areas at 40 acres.
"They took away part of our rights," said Jim Dwyer, a cattle and tobacco farmer. "Those folks in the Urban Service Area still have the same rights they've always had."
Not that Dwyer and other farmers are huge fans of PDR.
In their minds, the program is underfunded and offers farmers only a fraction of the money they might have otherwise gotten from developers.
'Paltry' compensation
So far, the PDR program has paid an average of about $2,500 per acre preserved. The highest compensation per acre, $4,216.80, went to Dwyer for 205 acres off Houston Antioch Road. The lowest compensation, $821.19 per acre, was collected by David Jenkins for 379.63 acres off Jacks Creek Pike.
"I think the compensation is paltry compared with what the big land developers are getting," said J. Kirk Griggs, who received $2,950 per acre to preserve his 110-acre horse farm on Hume-Bedford Road. "It's not exactly a handout or a gravy train."
PDR officials defend their payments to farmers, noting that each farm is professionally appraised and ranked using a complex formula that takes into account everything from soil quality to proximity of other preserved farms.
In fact, the preservation program is becoming a national model, with cities such as Ann Arbor, Mich., considering similar initiatives, said Bill Van Pelt, the program's administrative officer.
PDR has also been a "highly successful" economic development tool that is boosting the local economy, Martin said.
No one is officially tracking how farmers spend their PDR payments, but program officials suggest the money is largely being used to finance improvements such as new fences and barns, pay down mortgages and buy more land.
Dwyer, for instance, used his $864,444 PDR payment to buy another 127-acre farm across the county line in Bourbon County. "I kept the money doing what it was supposed to be doing," Dwyer said.
Scanlon isn't convinced that others are doing the same. "The perception of the public is that the money is going into the pockets of farmers and they're buying condos in Florida with it."
Lexington has spared $25 million of farmland from development -- but the program's success isn't without controversy.
I hope you will read this article thoroughly. I'm interested in your questions and concerns, which is why I posted this.
You will note that landowners must apply for the PDR funds. No one was (is) compelled to participate. Many of these landowners believe the program is underfunded and progressing too slowly.
I don't believe those organizations have a corner on good ideas. What can we do with the PDR approach that works from a conservative's viewpoint? What changes make it work better for landowners?
Which landowners? Are "the landowners" the specific landowners in the article, or The Landowners, being a subset of We the People?
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.
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