THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 4, 1994 TAG: 9412040047
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 150 lines
A city map shows as well as anything the contrast between north and south.
Above Princess Anne Road is a dense glob of streets; a cross-hatching of thoroughfares, parks, malls, neighborhoods, schools and exit ramps.
Just below, it looks like someone carefully ran an eraser and wiped almost everything away.
More than 40 percent of the most-populous city in the state is still rural. But despite repeated efforts over 15 years, local leaders have not succeeded in developing a plan to keep it that way.
Next month, a group of environmentalists, farmers and city officials will present to the City Council a new idea for slowing sprawl by helping save the family farm. They have tried to keep the plan out of the public eye until now to protect it from controversy before it is complete.
Supporters say the plan, called the Agricultural Reserve Program, will work where others have failed because it provides options instead of restrictions, carrots instead of sticks.
``Regulation hasn't worked,'' said environmental consultant Mary M. Heinricht, who helped draft the new plan. ``You need voluntary compliance.''
The Agricultural Reserve Program would pay landowners for forgoing development instead of telling them they can't cash in on suburbia, as the Green Line restrictions tried to do.
The program would have the city buying and controlling development rights instead of giving that control to the builders, as the failed transfer-of-development-rights program would have done.
Members of the ad hoc Southern Watersheds Committee say the program they devised will help save the city's 43,000 acres of farmland by providing a financial incentive for agriculture. It could preservethe environment by minimizing land-use, and could limit the cost of providing water, sewer lines, schools and roads to southern land.
It is also expected to be costly. Although estimates have not been finalized, simple multiplication shows that buying development rights to thousands of acres at thousands of dollars per acre will cost city taxpayers millions of dollars.
Shutting off the supply of developable land in the southern half of the city could raise the price of development in the north.
There is also a question of need. Until an additional source of fresh water is found for Virginia Beach, there won't be much pressure to develop below the Green Line, which still roughly follows Princess Anne and Sandbridge Roads.
And the details that have yet to be worked out may be critical.
Committee members have yet to resolve where the money to purchase development rights would come from. They are still working out a ranking system to determine which property to buy first. They are still trying to figure out how to convince taxpayers in the northern part of the city that it's worth paying to prevent growth.
But farmers who volunteered to participate would be paid roughly the difference between what their property is worth to a developer and what it is worth as farmland, usually several thousand dollars per acre. That money could remove farmers' incentive to sell cornfields for cul-de-sacs.
After 25 years, farmers would have the option to buy back those development rights.
Many farmers say that's the only fair way to do things.
``It's great for (residents of the northern part of the city) to say, `Let's drive in the country, it's beautiful there, let's keep it that way,' '' said Steve Barnes, a specialty farmer who works 450 acres near Sandbridge Road.
``(But) that's wrong, because it's costing us to keep it that way. Where were they when I was trying to make a living on this dirt-hole?'' asked Barnes, Virginia Beach man of the year in agriculture in 1993. ``What they care about is the open spaces; they don't care about farming.''
Land is a farmer's retirement fund, his bankruptcy insurance and his children's inheritance, farmer and City Councilman John A. Baum said.
The plan to preserve farmland won't work if farmers don't agree to participate, said Louis E. Cullipher, the city's director of agriculture and enough of a farmer to show up at the Municipal Center with tomato-stained hands. Farmers won't agree to sell their development rights if they're not offered a fair price, he said.
Preserving farmland is not just a boon for men like Barnes, Baum and Cullipher; agriculture is one of Virginia Beach's largest industries, with an economic impact of more than $50 million a year.
Local farmers receive about $4.7 million a year in subsidies and tax incentives, but they will eventually move somewhere else if the city and state do not support them more actively, Cullipher said.
Approving the Agricultural Reserve Program would send a message to farmers that the city is willing to help, he said. The program would also help solve other agriculture-industry problems by keeping a critical mass of farmers nearby and residential development away.
Virginia Beach has close to the minimum number of farms that the agriculture industry needs to survive in a locale, Cullipher said. Farmers need tractor salesmen and rentable land nearby; without those things, farmers will move to places with cheaper land and better services.
The encroachment of residential development also makes it harder to farm in Virginia Beach, Councilman Baum said.
``Residential growth and agriculture don't go well with each other,'' said Baum, a tree-farmer whose family moved to the area 200 years ago. ``When I was growing up, it seemed like everybody lived on a farm, or if they lived in the city they came off the farm. Now they don't have that background.''
Most who move to Pungo or Blackwater, Baum said, think farm animals are cute, but they don't want to smell them during cookouts. They like driving past vast acres of wheat, but they don't want to get stuck behind slow-moving combines. They like to take pictures of quaint farmhouses, but they don't like farm noises or the pesticides that can make the difference between a good year and a disaster, Baum said.
The Agricultural Reserve Program wouldn't prevent people from moving into rural areas, but it would eventually limit the number of sites where houses could be built.
That's also what environmentalists would like: fewer areas where woods could be replaced by neatly mowed lawns and wetlands could be surrounded by subdivisions.
Environmentalist Heinricht said the program could save huge areas of land by preserving farms and reducing growth.
The savings to taxpayers would be more tangible, though it may take a while, Heinricht said.
Unless a suburbanite owns a home worth more than $250,000, he requires more city money for services than he pays in taxes; estimates show that most suburban homeowners receive $1.30 in services for every tax dollar they put in, Heinricht said.
Farmers traditionally get back only about 30 cents in services for every dollar they contribute, she said.
Building roads and schools and extending water, sewer and electric lines to all of Pungo and Blackwater would be hugely expensive. The Agricultural Reserve Program aims to save much of those expenses.
``The costs that will be saved - private and public - will easily be worth the value of the land,'' said J. Paxton Marshall, an extension economist in public policy with Virginia Tech. ``The cost of urban sprawl is just ridiculous, just ridiculous, there's no question about that.''
Heinricht explains it even more simply:
``Corn doesn't go to school.''
The environmentalists, farmers and city officials who drafted the program share Heinricht's commitment to keeping land south of the Green Line different from that to the north.
``To do down there what we did in the north half of the city I think would be a disastrous mistake for us,'' said planning commission member Daniel Jay Arris. ``This seems to be a rather painless way to do it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff
Land is a farmer's retirement fund, his bankruptcy insurance and his
children's inheritance, says farmer and Councilman John A. Baum,
walking on his property.
Photo
PAUL AIKEN/Staff
``Regulation hasn't worked,'' says consultant Mary M. Heinricht, who
helped draft the plan. ``You need voluntary compliance.''
by CNB