GILROY
– To save potentially thousands of acres of farmland outside of
Gilroy, a special task force says a more lenient approach than what
city officials want will do just fine.
GILROY – To save potentially thousands of acres of farmland outside of Gilroy, a special task force says a more lenient approach than what city officials want will do just fine.
And former mayor Tom Springer, who criticized the group’s first attempt at drafting a farmland preservation bill, says the less rigid approach is a good thing. The now-retired politician called recent interpretations of the farmland preservation policy he helped draft, “too stringent.”
“That level of rigidity was not written or intended to be written in,” Springer said regarding two critical issues that farmland owners, developers and open space advocates have spent weeks grappling with. “This isn’t new, people put words in my mouth all the time.”
The former mayor said Thursday that developers should have the option to pay impact fees without those charges being based on full market value. And, developers should not be required to preserve ag land unless they are building homes or businesses on more than 10 acres of the area’s best farmland (or 40 acres of farmland considered to be of statewide importance).
These statements, which were echoed Wednesday night by a majority of task force members, are in stark contrast to much of what open space advocates, city staff and the city attorney have claimed in recent weeks.
It also seems to contradict what Springer had told the task force in October when City Council rejected the group’s preservation bill.
Since January, the task force has been reconvening at City Hall to hammer out a handful of changes it believed the Springer-led Council demanded. The changes involve:
• making developers preserve one acre of farmland every time they build on an acre of farmland,
• making developers pay an impact fee (to be used to purchase farmland) based on expensive market values.
Developers and farmland owners call the rules unfair and costly for both small scale and large scale developers. They claim if City Council passes a preservation policy that sticks to these guidelines, it would put a virtual anti-development wall around Gilroy and would cheat farmers out of their retirement plans: cashing in on the sale of their farmland.
“Springer’s comments are just the way farmland owners thought of it a long time ago, and then for whatever reason the city attorney and staff came back and said, ‘No this is not the way it is.’ Also there was a different opinion from the open space group,” said task force chairman Richard Barberi, who owns farmland in Gilroy.
Open space advocates, city staff and the city’s lawyer say the guidelines are spelled out in the Gilroy General Plan. And some have argued the guidelines were purposely stringent to offset the future industrialization of 660 farmland acres on the northeast section of town.
Now, Springer is making himself clear. He says developers should have to preserve an acre for every acre they develop but only when they develop a large parcel such as 10 acres of the area’s best farmland or more.
“What we were trying to do was to deal with large areas that were being annexed and incorporated into the city for major development. We weren’t trying to say every little square inch must be mitigated,” Springer said.
Springer also claims he never intended that farmland impact fees should be based on costly market-value real estate rates.
The city’s General Plan states that an impact fee “shall be equivalent in value” to the purchase of an acre of prime agricultural land. But Springer steadfastly insisted Thursday that the word “value” does not mean a dollar amount.
“I was using the term value in the sense of general value not specific dollars,” Springer said. “The policy is supposed to be more about making sense, than about making dollars and cents.”
Springer said his key complaint with the task force’s proposal back in October was that it focused on using impact fees to offset farmland development. Springer said it is important to keep all three mitigation options open. They are, essentially: purchasing farmland outright for preservation, purchasing development rights on farmland but letting farmers retain control of the land to grow crops and paying an impact fee that would be used for future farmland purchases.
At its most recent City Hall meeting Wednesday, the city’s agricultural preservation task force said people who turn farmland into homes or businesses should not be required to preserve farmland elsewhere, unless they are developing more than 10 acres.
The group also said farmland impact fees should not be based on the land’s market value, but on rates as much as $25,000- to $55,000-per-acre cheaper – a policy open space activists appear ready to challenge in court and a policy the city says would require a new $100,000 environmental impact report.
“We’re not here to change the General Plan. We’re not here to look at this just from the developers angle,” task force member and former Councilman Peter Arellano said. “Why are we forwarding a policy to the Council with the full knowledge this could cost the city $100,000?”
“Because (the alternative) is not feasible!” fellow task force member Norm Thompson shouted. “We’re allowed to suggest things to (the City Council). It’s up to them to approve it. They have the power to say yes or no.”
The task force is expected to finalize its new farmland preservation bill over its next two sessions. Plans are to present it to Council in March.
