Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 14, 1993 TAG: 9304140316
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAY TAYLOR CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
ROANOKE OWNERS DEFEND TAX BREAKS FOR FARMLAND
When his boys left for Virginia Tech in the mid-1960s, Estein Hylton decided that raising cattle, chickens and alfalfa was too much work. He was an insurance agent anyway, and did not need the money.He called one of his customers, Judson Kesler, a dairy farmer, and asked if he would be interested in leasing the land, 15 acres along U.S. 460 in what was then Roanoke County.
Kesler agreed and planted the land in hay; Hylton sold his animals. After Kesler died in 1971, his two sons kept mowing the hay a few times each year.
The deal has been good for Hylton and for the Keslers. The Keslers get hay for their dairy operation 10 miles away. Because the land still is farmed, Hylton qualifies for a tax break from the city, which annexed the fields nearly 20 years ago.
Rather than assess farmland for its potential development worth, the city recognizes its value solely as farmland. The program, used statewide in Virginia, was crafted to protect farmers from property values inflated by speculation, rather than its actual use. By taxing cornfields as cornfields, rather than as potential factory sites, the city gave farmers a chance to keep their land.
But is it a good deal for everybody else? Maybe not, say a few prominent city politicians, led by Mayor David Bowers. In Hylton's fields, and in the hundreds of other agricultural acres, they see a potential cash crop worth millions of dollars - manufacturing and commercial operations on large blocks of open land. By ending the tax break, they might be able to pressure the owners to sell quickly to developers.
Bowers has proposed an end to the special treatment for farmland. The immediate impact would be to funnel more than $126,000 yearly in new tax revenues into city coffers.
Last week, City Manager Bob Herbert said that tax breaks for the owners of agricultural land might be outdated for a city the size of Roanoke. Herbert said the low assessment on farmland is a remnant from the mid-1970s when the city annexed nearly 16 square miles of Roanoke County. City Council agreed to take up the issue during its upcoming study for anew budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The future of 670 acres likely lies in the outcome.
As gathering political forces push to harvest the land subsidy, the owners are standing with pitchforks at the gates. They speak with one voice in defense of their tax break. But if not for the common enemy, this disparate band of landholders would have little else to bind them together.
Some aren't interested in development. They just want to be left alone in their retirement.
Some are preservationists, and they support the tax subsidy because it preserves historic properties and open spaces. Stripping the tax break heralds the destruction of amenities that future generations would cherish, they say.
Some are farmers, and they simply want land for cattle and hay. The repeal would make their operations more expensive and less convenient.
Some are speculators and inheritors, ready to sell - but at the right time, at the right price, to the right bidder. The bigger the business planned for the land, the better for Roanoke, they argue. Bowers' proposed shift in policy, and the dramatically inflated tax bill it would mean for the agricultural landowners, could force premature sales that aren't necessarily in the city's best interest.
Beneath this public-mindedness lies an obvious self-interest - the longer that landholders hang onto their property, the more its value increases.
Is this subsidy a good deal for the rest of the city? Yes, according to several landowners and the farmers who lease the land. Some landowners would not be interviewed for this story, but those who did growled about the city's greed, the stupidity of gutting a land-use policy that has promoted orderly development, about the scarcity of farmland and about the shortsightedness of city politicians.
Some believe the farmer needs more help, not less. "It would put us out of farming if we are going to do that," said Glenn Ramsey, who both farms his own city land and leases city farm acreage from developer Maury Strauss.
Where is more land going to come from? demands Bobby Kesler, who took his father's place farming Hylton's land when the elder Kesler died in 1971. "Brother, you don't replace land," he said. "There's not any more growing." Kesler said he plans to call Bowers "at my convenience." Kesler and his brother have about 125 head of dairy cattle at their Bedford County farm.
Carl Catron, another urban farmer, is not so attached to the city. Catron, a Bedford County man who manages cattle on the Louise Kegley property in Northeast Roanoke, likes his current deal just fine for grazing cattle. But he said finding a substitute would be easy. "There's plenty of land in the county," said Catron, who manages about 650 acres in the Roanoke area and in Bedford County.
Besides, "city farming is not what it's cracked up to be," he said. When he farmed near Valley View Mall, people were "tearing the fences down and tearing up your crops up and tearing up your equipment."
Vandals "busted the tires, tore the radiator up and broke the windows out" of his tractor at his Vinton operation. The pace of agriculture seems to annoy city people, he said. "Farm equipment doesn't move very fast. They don't want to be held up. They're always in a hurry. They stop and cuss you out."
He opposes the Bowers proposal because it would make life tough on Kegley; she, in turn, might have to raise the rent if her taxes go up.
Louise Kegley and her husband, George, live in a historic landmark, Monterey, built about 1845. The Kegleys have no intention of leaving their land, either, though their 116 acres are sandwiched between two golf courses and land the city has set aside for an industrial park.
Louise Kegley has as many questions as she does worries. What's the value of green land? How do we put a price on that? And what of historic properties that stand now on agricultural land? Will they be dwarfed by widget factories?
Kegley's annual tax bill would skyrocket about sevenfold if the tax break for agricultural land is repealed.
The financial vise that would squeeze the Kegleys would pinch others all over Roanoke.
Fourteen members of the Watts family own about 50 acres on the city's north side. Wheat is grown there.
"If the land is to be developed to its highest and best use, it has to be kept in a large block," said William Watts, who isn't among the owners, but "looks after the land" for his family members. The family would like to sell, but their land has poor road access.
"The land is as flat as a pool table . . . and it's easy to work and very productive," according to Watts. This is "hard to find anywhere close to Roanoke," he said.
The city's tax break has fathered a lot of important city development on farmland, the most prominent of which is Valley View Mall, according to John Bradshaw, a member of the city Planning Commission and the manager of north Roanoke farm properties held for generations by the Andrews family. Much Andrews land has been sold for development, including a United Parcel Service terminal built adjacent to the Roanoke Regional Airport.
The Andrews family holds some undeveloped land - nearly $2.5 million worth - along Hershberger Road.
"It is a very valuable tract of agricultural-purpose land, but its primary use is not for farming. Its primary use is to keep it in good shape until a logical developer . . . would come in here," Bradshaw said.
"If it hadn't been for the land-use deferral for agricultural purposes, UPS would not have had a location in the city which would be suitable to them," he said. "In the Roanoke Valley, the area around Hershberger and the Interstate 581 interchange was the finest farmland in the whole valley."
Some landowners have been tight-lipped about Bowers' proposal to do away with their tax breaks. They met last week to discuss the situation.
Glenn Ramsey, who farms his own city land and that of developer Strauss, said the property holders would meet. He didn't return phone calls after the meeting. Neither did Strauss. Nor would the Dominion Bank trust officer for the $2.5 million Huff estate.
Development of the land is the future, Bradshaw said. "There isn't a single landowner under agricultural deferment that wouldn't sell that land if the proper type of arrangement, in their mind, came to pass. I don't think anybody is sitting on it just to look at it," he said.
A smidgen of sentimentality, though, does seem to survive.
The Kegleys say they don't want to sell. And though developers have sniffed around Hylton's land for years, they aren't ready to deal, either.
Mary Hylton likes the feel of the land. "It suits us just fine because we can sit up here on our hill and we aren't bothered by anybody," she said.
"I could have sold half of it for a shopping center," said Estein Hylton. His wife wouldn't let him.
"I can get along just fine on this hill," she says.
\ HOW FARM TAX WOULD CHANGE\ ROANOKE CITY COUNCIL IS EVALUATING WHETHER TO ALTER THE BREAKS GIVEN FARMLAND\ OWNERS ANNUALTAX NO TAX BREAKS DIFFERENCE\ Huff estate $661 $33,598 $32,937\ Hylton, Estein and Mary $230 $3,355 $3,125\ Kegley, Louise F. $1,210 $8,001 $6,791\ Ramsey, Glenn W. $463 $6,991 $6,528\ Watts, William $853 $4,400 $3,547\