THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 9, 1995 TAG: 9505090008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
The ordinance to enact the Agricultural Reserve Program, in which the city buys development rights from owners willing to sell farmland in Virginia Beach's southern half, runs 19 pages. That alone should plant a seed of doubt as City Council votes on the ARP today.
Nowhere in those 19 pages is a dollar sign, or mention of a funding mechanism, or a measure of effectiveness. The figures, such as they are, are in the budget, which council also takes up today. It provides a 1.5 cent rise in the real-estate tax rate citywide to raise some $3.5 million a year. Estimated cost overall: $87.5 million. Is that too much, too little or about right to meet landowners' demand for purchase of their development rights at the price they want and to preserve agriculture in the city's south, protect natural resources and prevent suburban sprawl?
ARP supporters can't, or don't, say. Participation is voluntary. Though tax money will buy a ``preservation easement'' in perpetuity, a landowner may exchange some ``banked'' acres for others of similar value to the program. After 25 years he may petition council to buy back his development rights. Meantime, as the supply of buildable land decreases, its price rises. So the city pays more for development rights. And keeps 'em down on the farm, awaiting higher bidders. Or enacts more zoning limits to depress prices.
Yet today's only doubt is whether ARP passes unanimously or just overwhelmingly. Support from an unusual alliance of agricultural interests, which have seen farmland value decline and zoning restrictions to residential development climb, and environmental interests, which lack the money to buy the land outright, has muted opposition. Who can argue that the Beach's southern half should be as jampacked and jerry-built as its north?
But the argument is not whether to prevent sprawl but how best to do so and at what cost to whom. Current zoning restrictions strictly limit residential development. They permit, as the ARP may not, residential/commercial development - golf courses and pricey homes, say - with benefits citywide, particularly in the ``transition areas'' between north and south. ARP's scope, fund and future are as subject as zoning to council's whim. The property owners whom the ARP ben-e-fits directly are a thousandth of those who will pay. Even fewer attended its inception, or will monitor its execution.
Much citizen effort went into the ARP. City staff has improved it. But this ambitious plan needed more public, detailed examination than it got. It warrants more impartial oversight than this ordinance provides. And at the least, it requires some way to tell if in time, money and results, ARP is too hard a row to hoe. by CNB