Gilroy
– Cries of
”
Grandfather,
”
”
Let them out
”
and
”
Amnesty
”
rang through Gilroy’s City Hall Thursday as landowners clashed
with county officials in a ongoing property tax battle with
significant implications for county farmland and open space, and
potentially millions of dollars at stake.
Gilroy – Cries of “Grandfather,” “Let them out” and “Amnesty” rang through Gilroy’s City Hall Thursday as landowners clashed with county officials in a ongoing property tax battle with significant implications for county farmland and open space, and potentially millions of dollars at stake.
Meanwhile the state Department of Conservation continued to pressure the county to properly enforce the Williamson Act, officially recommending for the second time in three years that all county landowners whose property does not meet the minimum acreage requirements of 10 acres of prime or 40 acres of non-prime land be evicted from the act over the next 10 years.
That unsolicited counsel came after county officials asked the state agency for input on criteria it’s trying to establish for new Williamson contracts – that effort has been postponed – and echoes advice the agency gave in May 2002, after an audit of the county’s Williamson program. It was met Thursday with the same enmity that caused the county to table the proposal in 2003.
“I don’t have a quarter million dollars to cancel my contract,” said Al Lartor, who owns 17 acres in east San Jose. “It might cost me a quarter of a million dollars for lawyers, but I’ll go that way because it’s not fair.”
Lartor said he recently lost an opportunity to sell his property for as much as $2 million because the prospective buyer wanted to run a horse stabling operation, which officials now say is not allowable, even though Lartor’s contract says otherwise.
His anger is shared by many afraid they will lose the act’s tax protection or the right to control their property. About 40 real estate agents, farmers and ranchers had their say in a meeting that lasted nearly three hours. If the county is going to change the way it enforces the act, they said, then it must honor the original contracts or allow holders to void them without penalty.
“We should be able to rely on the contract,” Don Long, a rancher with 420 acres behind Gavilan College, said. “People are threatening to sue because the uses are changing but the contracts haven’t.”
Known as the California Land Conservation Act, Williamson was passed in 1965 as a way to preserve agricultural enterprises and protect open space. The act provides land owners with property tax breaks in exchange for maintaining farm operations or specific kinds of open space.
Of the just more than 3,000 county parcels in the act, about 900 are of less than 10 acres. About 1,600 have fewer than 40. Not all of those parcels would be non-renewed because some of them are adjacent to parcels that meet the size requirements and are held by the same owner.
Prime land is typically on the valley floor and can support orchards and row crops. In 2003, there were 330,769 acres under contract in Santa Clara County. Of those, 11,396 acres were prime.
Final oversight rests with the state, but it is managed county by county. In response to a 2002 routine audit that uncovered a number of illegitimate parcels, the county decided to tighten its control over the act. Three years later the county is still trying.
The interests at stake are so diverse, the task force charged with sorting out the county’s management of the act has had trouble deciding where to start. It has set aside for several months what was supposed to be its first job – defining agriculture and setting criteria for new Williamson applicants.
The criteria were scheduled to be submitted to the board of supervisors next week, but Agriculture Commissioner Greg Van Wassenhove said that time frame proved “unreasonable.” He said the task force will recommend that the county not accept Williamson applications until next year.
“We’re liable to find as we go back through existing contracts, we’ll have to go back and ask the board to change what we asked them to adopt,” Van Wassenhove said, predicting that the task force could establish criteria for new and existing contracts by November.
As laid out in draft form, the new criteria include strict minimum size requirements and proof of a commercially viable farm enterprise.
“Part of the problem is that people are suspicious that the new standards are what we’ll adopt for existing contracts,” said Lizanne Reynolds, a deputy counsel. Reynolds said the county is not trying to avoid the problem as it has in the past.
But officials now must find a way to please a variety of interests, and balance efforts to preserve open space with the rights of owners who want to develop their land.
Several landowners with parcels below the minimum size said at Thursday’s meeting that they would be happy to lose their tax break in exchange for approval to build a home on their property, but it takes a decade to legally break a contract. Canceling a contract forces a property owner to pay a fine of at least 12.5 percent of the land’s market value and is allowed only under the strictest circumstances. The county has allowed just two cancellations in the last year.
And then there are the farmers and ranchers who meet size requirements, but want more say over their land, or are retired from commercial agriculture.
Jenny Derry, executive director of the Santa Clara County Farm Bureau, said that any land that meets the size requirement should keep its Williamson protection.
“People over 10 and 40 should be presumed to be agriculture compatible because even if the land isn’t being farmed now, it could be by a future owner,” she said.
The next meeting of the task force has not been scheduled. Information on all Williamson Act developments is available at www.sccagriculture.org.
What:
Meeting of the Housing, Land Use, Environment & Transportation Committee
When:
Monday, May 9, 9:30am
Where:
Board Chambers, 70 W. Hedding St., San Jose
