GILROY
– This agriculture-turned-retail town has joined myriad other
California cities with policies aimed at preserving farmland.
GILROY – This agriculture-turned-retail town has joined myriad other California cities with policies aimed at preserving farmland.
Despite months of controversy and more than a year of tinkering, City Council approved a so-called agriculture mitigation policy Monday that makes developers buy and preserve farmland whenever farmland around Gilroy is developed.
The bill, which has pitted farmers and developers against open space and farmland advocates, is aimed at preserving as much area farmland as possible while allowing Gilroy to develop and expand.
Specifically, the bill makes it tougher to build homes and businesses on existing agricultural land by requiring developers to preserve an acre of farmland every time they develop an acre of farmland. Land not designated agricultural does not fall under the bill.
“It’s really a tax on you as a farmer,” said Richard Barberi, a farmland owner who chaired the task force. “(Acre-for-acre mitigation) is not fair.”
Barberi’s concern was shared by Councilman Craig Gartman, who represented the only opposition in the 6-1 Council vote.
“The one thing that has always bothered me (about the farmland preservation bill ) was the acreage,” Gartman said.
Barberi and other members of the task force wanted mitigation to be triggered any time 10 acres of prime agricultural land or 40 acres of farmland of statewide importance were developed.
Gartman also said he had concerns over permanently preserving land for only agricultural uses.
“What happens 20 to 30 years down the road when land all around (the preserved parcel) has been developed and we need to build more homes and we need to put in shops and industry to support that community?”
For Mayor Al Pinheiro, the bill represents a tough-but-flexible, compromise approach to ag mitigation.
“There is a cost to mitigation and that cost is going to be paid by whoever buys those homes there, but at the end of the day we are going to save some farmland,” Pinheiro said.
Three of the four farmland owners who served on the task force with Barberi were not present at Monday’s Council session. Pinheiro hinted he was disappointed in the lack of farmers present Monday night.
“I have (Save Open Space Gilroy), I have the (Home Builders of Northern California) and whomever else all here tooting their horns, … but I don’t see any farmers here tonight,” Pinheiro said.
The farmland preservation bill is a complex document that still had at least some Council members confused over the details. Specifically, the new farmland policy will require developers to mitigate their impacts on agriculture in one of three ways.
The three options are:
• Purchase at fair market value an equal amount of farmland elsewhere and donate it to a land trust.
• Purchase the development rights (which is less than fair market value) on an equal amount of farmland, donate those rights to a land trust, and let the farmer continue to work the land.
• Pay an impact fee that gets donated to a land trust which can later purchase and preserve farmland. The fee would be based on the cost of development rights, not fair market value.
Under each option, mitigation is triggered by the development of one acre of active farmland.
Again, Gartman had concerns. The business-friendly councilman worries that ag land owners will get around the “active farmland” clause by letting the land sit fallow for a number of years before selling or developing the acreage.
In theory, fallow farmland would not be deemed significant and would not have to be mitigated in many instances. If enough farmland owners keep their land fallow and wait for their development options to unfold, the farmland preservation bill could become a paper tiger.
Now that Council has signed off on the farmland bill, staff can begin applying it to new developments, City Planner Cydney Casper said.
“I do think this policy has teeth,” said Connie Rogers, a member of Save Open Space Gilroy. “But we probably aren’t going to see immediate results.”
Rogers figures most developers will mitigate using the third – and likely cheapest – option of paying an impact fee estimated at $3,000 to $5,000 an acre. Under this system, it could be years before there were enough funds to purchase a significant tract of farmland.
