THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 5, 1995 TAG: 9502040113
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Beth Barber
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
Almost half this city's acreage is in the south but its people live mostly in the north.
The Agriculture Reserve Program aims to keep it that way by paying rural landowners not to build houses on their acreage or sell to developers who will. Putting aside 20,000 acres of prime farmland, ARP supporters say, will keep people out, farmland prices reasonable, school- and road-building down, environmental disruption minimal, and farming, in short, viable. And that means a more diversified tax base, with ag-ri-cul-ture paying more taxes into the city treasury than the city returns in services (30 cents of each $1 in taxes, according to the ARP).
Few folks want the suburban sprawl of the north to repeat in the south. But whether the ARP and the guess-ti-mated $87.5 million tab to taxpayers are an efficient or effective or even necessary step around that repetition begs for vigorous debate.
Unfortunately, opponents who are as impassioned and at least as knowledgeable as proponents seldom speak, and never publicly. But their criticism should give the city pause, since those against as well as for include potential recipients of what sounds increasingly like free money. Leave land idle and collect a government check - fair or not, that's how many urban taxpayers see modern farming; and they didn't elect Gingrich's Congress, or the Beach City Council, to per-pet-u-ate it. Did they?
It's a question Beach voters won't get asked, not directly anyway. The ARP doesn't men-tion a referendum. Or any specific source of revenue. Or that 58,000 or so acres aren't build-able anyway because they're water or wetlands or preserves. Or that the ARP's 20,000-acre goal amounts to most of the developable acreage left. Or that pricy houses on large rural lots can, like farms, be net contributors to the city kitty.
It's not just the citified who aren't convinced that the ARP (or anything else) will keep the next generation down on the farm, or keep farming economically vi-a-ble. Or that land-owners up around the Green Line, water line and sewer line will forgo development unless taxpayers outpay developers. Or that the north will raise taxes to keep the south uncrowded - and further crowd the north.
Does the city really need to purchase development rights when existing government restrictions have already reduced residential de-vel-op-ment in the south to maybe 25 homes a year? Does it need to keep southern landowners wondering how else government can reduce their property rights, their property's value, and their trust in gov-ern-ment?
Does the ARP have more to do with conserving land than farming it? Does the hurry have more to do with Congress' maybe making it more difficult and more expensive to take private property? Or with potential election reform that could deprive small rural boroughs of their clout and Council seats?
Two Council members, John Baum of Blackwater and Barbara Hen-ley of Pungo, serve on the ad hoc citizens' committee that drew up the ARP. They also own property eligible for ARP purchase. That's not a violation of conflict-of-interest law; they would benefit from ARP no more than any other participant. And the committee surely benefited from their expertise. But their participation has prompted concern that subsequent analysis hasn't been as in-depth as it needs to be, and kept some critics quiet about missing details.
Councilman John Moss may raise that devil at Tuesday's Council meeting. That's one forum in which to give and get answers on the ARP.
To proponents and opponents who'd like to debate - cogently, briefly, reasonably - The Beacon offers another. by CNB