Next Tuesday, Sept. 25, a most important hearing will serve as a test for what life will be like without County Supervisor Brooks Firestone on the dais.

 

For the past several decades all homeowners in our state have enjoyed the benefits of Proposition 13, which limited property tax increases to 1 percent per year. Before Prop 13 was passed, I can remember hearing stories of elderly residents who, despite having paid off their mortgages, were being forced to sell their homes because they couldn’t afford the ever escalating property tax payments. Prop 13, still to this day, is the one thing standing between the average homeowner and foreclosure!

 

Similarly, farmers and ranchers have benefited from a law known as the Williamson Act.  The Williamson Act protected farmers and ranchers from tax assessments that would have forced them to sell their property. Before passage of the Williamson Act, agricultural properties were being assessed for their development potential, as if the land were suitable for non-agricultural development, which in many cases are not. Now these lands are taxed for their ag value. That is because the state and the ag community came up with a plan that served to forbid non-ag development on ag parcels if the property owner would sign a rolling 10-year contract to voluntarily conserve the land. Over 500,000 acres in our county are in this voluntary conservation program, and it is the number one reason our county remains rural to this day.

 

In the South County, there have been public campaigns that have served to raise tens of millions of dollars in order to conserve just a few thousand acres of land. Everyone realizes that there is no way our community could ever hope to raise enough money to purchase all the development rights to the majority of lands that remain eligible for development. In light of these facts, you would think that the no-growthers throughout our county would be begging the ag community to stay in the Williamson Act.  Furthermore, you would think they would work to make the program as attractive as possible so as to retain as much property in the reserve at relatively little cost to the community. I hate to tell you that for some inexplicable reason, this is not the case.

 

Some agitators in the county have bullied Brooks Firestone into recusing himself from voting on this item because he and his family own a relatively small amount of land in the act. Similarly, these same folks have served to drag out an update to the act, known as the Uniform Rules. Supervisors Wolf and Carbajal have not indicated one way or another whether they are going to support updating the program at the meeting on Sept. 25.

 

In order for agriculture to survive in this county and to keep our county rural, two things have to happen. First, property owners must have an incentive to enroll their property into the program to ensure they can afford the taxes on their property and they and their families must be allowed to live on the land. Second, the county must allow the farmers and ranchers to build the production and processing plants necessary to get their product to market. After all, who is going to grow a crop that can’t be harvested and packaged for shipment? All of this is permitted under the act. The Uniform Rules must be updated accordingly. That is what this hearing is all about.

 

If you want to keep our county rural, then please come to the hearing on the Sept. 25. The hearing will be at the Betteravia Government Center in Santa Maria, no sooner than 2 p.m. Let’s see what kind of support and commitment to agriculture we can expect from the Board of Supervisors once Brooks Firestone leaves the board. 

 

Andy Caldwell is the executive director of COLAB and a 39–year resident of the Central Coast. Contact information can be found at the COLAB Web site at www.colabsbc.org.