THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 7, 1995 TAG: 9505070046
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 121 lines
Last year, the City Council severely limited farmers' ability to develop their land. This week, the council is expected to even the score by handing farmers the power to slow residential growth.
The council is expected to approve funding for the $90 million Agricultural Reserve Program, a plan meant to preserve thousands of acres of farmland in the southern half of the city by paying landowners not to develop.
A voluntary program, it will work only if farmers agree to participate. As encouragement, the city would pay them the difference between their land's value for farming and its value for development.
The two farmers on the City Council who helped draft the plan believe it will sustain farming as a viable business in the state's most populous city. Many farmers seem willing to participate - if the price is right. Some say City Hall has betrayed them too often to be trusted now.
Left out of that city-farmer equation are thousands of residents from the northern half of town who will bear the cost of keeping farmers behind their plows.
The council's 1995-96 budget, expected to be approved Tuesday, includes a 1.5-cent tax increase dedicated to purchasing the farmers' development rights. Other budget sources will bring annual funds for the program up to $3.5 million.
The program, slated to last 25 years, will allow the city to buy development rights to about 20,000 farmland acres. The public will not have access to that land, but will be spared the cost of providing city services to homeowners who would have moved there.
Most Beach residents have been silent on the program. Only two speakers of nearly 100 at recent budget hearings spontaneously mentioned the Agricultural Reserve Program. About 10 others who spoke about it had helped write the plan.
Some are taking the silence to mean the program has not been considered enough. In an April 24 letter, David C. Fuller, chairman of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce-Virginia Beach Division, asked the mayor and the council to slow the approval process until the public can be educated better about the plan's potential benefits and costs.
Proponents of the Agricultural Reserve Program interpret the public silence as support. People rarely come to City Hall when they're happy with something, council member and farmer Barbara M. Henley said.
More than 70 percent of respondents to a poll sponsored by the Nature Conservancy, which supports the preservation plan, said they would be willing to pay more in taxes to help keep open land in the southern part of the city. Garden clubs and civic leagues citywide have been talking about the program, yet have generated no visible opposition.
And in dozens of interviews over the past six months, Beach residents said they are tired of paying taxes to provide streets, sewers and schools for new homeowners. They want the money spent to improve infrastructures in their own neighborhoods.
``We've had so much (development) to deal with and we still haven't begun to catch up with it,'' Lynnhaven Acres resident Cyndy Bourquard told The Virginian-Pilot earlier this year. ``So I'm not sure that more growth is what we need, but somehow to back up a little bit and adapt and make the most of what we've got.''
Several city leaders said they like the Agricultural Reserve Program because it will handcuff the City Council. In the past, the council has given in to developers, allowing projects that council members later regretted.
In the late 1970s, the council approved the 3,000-unit Courthouse Estates for rural North Landing Road. In the years since, the city has tried to stop the development, which will create a demand for new roads and schools. But houses are now sprouting up like crops in the subdivision near the Municipal Center.
Council member Robert K. Dean said he supports the program's concept - although he disagrees with the proposed tax increase to finance it - because he wants future councils to be forced to slow growth.
``If history is a learning lesson, then we know not just this council but all the councils before us . . . have voted for just about every rezoning that there was,'' Dean said. ``And I think what needs to be asked, not of me, but of them, those who voted for all of these developments, ask them why they didn't have the political will to prevent urban sprawl. And why do we now have to take such drastic measures on the backs of the taxpayer to stop this from happening anymore?''
Last summer, a council desperate to slow growth significantly reduced the development potential of land below the ``green line,'' a boundary below which city sewer and water will not be extended.
The council limited development in the southern half of the city to 2,500 new homes. Before, landowners could put one housing unit for every 3 acres; after the down-zoning, they were restricted to one every 15 acres.
It was that decision, and a few since, that convinced farmer Douglas B. Munden that the leaders at City Hall didn't have his best interest at heart.
Munden, who lost almost his entire strawberry and vegetable crop to a hailstorm last weekend, said federal and city regulations have robbed his 180 acres of farmland of its value.
First, Munden said, federal wetlands regulations forbade development in low-lying areas; then the down-zoning drastically reduced his ability to subdivide and sell his land for development.
Munden said he believes the Agricultural Reserve Program gives the city a reason to try to devalue his farmland even more. If his property is worth less, the city won't have to pay as much to buy its development potential to preserve it, Munden said.
``It's almost an insult; the City Council has taken all my property rights away and now they're going to pay me,'' Munden said. ``If they want to stop development, if they want a rural nook, then give me what it's really worth.
``Then if they want to buy it, I'll sell it to them. I'm not against it. This is my investment. I wouldn't work these hours and do this hard work if I knew I was going to lose the value of the property.''
George L. Wadsworth, a retired realty agent and developer in the southern half of the city, agrees that the city has given rural landowners short shrift. But he sees the Agricultural Reserve Program as one way for property owners to reclaim some of what was rightfully theirs.
``I support (the program) mainly because they've taken away our land value down here,'' he said. ``It would be, primarily, a way to get some of it back.''
Wadsworth said he believes the program would bring more good than bad, because it would allow landowners to preserve their rural way of life.
``When I weigh it on the scales, I think we should be given the opportunity to participate,'' he said.
``Everyone is afraid. Everything's confused now,'' he continued. ``The land is really not for sale down here. People like it the way it is and they want to try to hold it as long as they can. But they don't want to be dictated to, (told) that they can't cut a lot off for the kids or something.'' by CNB