Master Planning and Density Based Zoning Key to Successful PDR Programs Agri-View: Capitol News

Editor’s note: This is the second in a four-part series on The Ultimate Land Use Study Tour, an educational tour that examined innovative land use implementation tools in Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The tour was coordinated by UW-Extension and took place Oct. 15n20. There were 50 participants from Wisconsin. This article was written by Mike Koles, Waupaca County UW-Extension community development educator.

“I won’t be part of a program that uses taxpayer dollars to fund putting farmland in a bank for future development.” This was how Ralph Robertson, a heifer and beef farmer from Carroll County, Md., who also manages the county’s Purchase of Development Rights (PDR) Program, began his portion of the educational program on the second day of “The Ultimate Land Use Study Tour”. The educational tour was coordinated by UW-Extension and examined innovative land use, agriculture and urban development tools in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

Robertson was referring to his dislike of programs that spend tax dollars on temporary preservation of land that is ultimately developed. According to Robertson, “this is a huge waste of taxpayer resources.” Purchasing development rights, on the other hand, is a preservation technique used by Carroll County to permanently preserve large blocks of contiguous farmland so that the agriculture economy can be maintained and grow absent the challenges posed by urban and suburban development. In a PDR program, a landowner voluntarily sells the development portion of his or her bundle of rights to a public or non-profit entity. The sale is no different than any real estate transaction and includes the typical negotiation. Often the negotiation involves setting aside a few developable areas on a property for what are commonly referred to as son or daughter lots.

According to Robertson, the success of the program, which has preserved over 50,000 acres in the county, would not have occurred absent a clear master plan that identifies where agriculture development and non-agricultural development will and will not occur. Carroll County adopted its first master plan in 1973 and consistently updates it. “Here we don’t view agricultural land as undeveloped. We view it as fully developed in agriculture because this is a big part of our economy. This is not viewed as a farmland preservation program. This is an agricultural development program,” he said. Farmland preservation dollars are not invested in areas that are designated for urban or suburban development.

Bill Amos, director of the Harford County, Md., PDR program reiterated Robertson’s point later in the day. “You must have a master plan and that master plan must be followed without question. If you don’t have a master plan that identifies where development is to go and where agriculture is welcomed to grow, no farmer would want to sell their rights. How can you expect someone to sell their rights and invest in their operation if they don’t know where growth and development will occur in the future?”

Wayne McGinnis, a beef farmer in Baltimore County, Md., who is known locally as the biggest farmer in Maryland due to his 6 foot 7 inch frame, agreed with Amos and further communicated that the plan must be supported by low density zoning. This was a consistent message throughout the tour. There must be a master plan and the master plan must be supported by low density zoning in the areas pegged for future permanent preservation through the PDR program. With a couple of exceptions, counties in these states use a density based zoning system with the typical minimum density being 1 house per 20 acres. McGinnis feels that even this density is much too high. “If you want to have 20 acre farmettes, then have 20 acre zoning. If you really want to get serious and have production agriculture, then get 50 acre zoning.” This is exactly what under girds Baltimore County’s program and McGinnis credits with reducing the amount of farmland fragmentation.

McGinnis, like many farmers, have used the program to expand their operation. The money from the sale of development rights is often used to pay down debt or make capital investments that he said result in agriculture economy growth. Some farmers use the program to expand the land base of their operation by using a 1031 exchange.

Carroll County takes this one step further through their Critical Farms Program. The program provides up-front funding for new owners by having the development rights sale be part of the contract that purchases the farm. Nearly 6,000 acres have been preserved for new farmers as part of the program. Matt Hoff, a dairy farmer, credits the program with empowering him to purchase his father’s farm. Without the program, he said, “I wouldn’t be farming.”

When Robertson, who is in charge of the Critical Farms Program, was confronted with the challenge by one of the participants that this one time sale of the equity that development rights provides robs the young farmer of future options, he replied, “You can sell your land once for development and it is gone or you can sell your development rights, continue to farm and you still have the land. In fact, we’re finding that the land is extremely valuable as an agricultural resource to other farmers because they know there won’t be homeowners around them.”

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