The James City County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 Tuesday to accept $286,983 in state grant funding for a program that pays landowners not to develop their property.
The grant funding was awarded in January to the county by Gov. Terry McAuliffe for the Purchase of Development Rights Program.
The program is voluntary and pays landowners to protect their land from development. James City County has paid eight landowners a total of about $3.5 million to preserve 701 acres since the program’s inception.
The supervisors must match the state funds with local money, but there is already about $740,000 in the county’s PDR fund so no new budget allocations must be made. Supervisor Mary Jones (Berkeley) was the lone holdout.
“When taxpayer dollars are used to purchase development rights on someone else’s property, you’re putting money in their bank account to not develop their property and reduces assessed value and then lowers the tax rolls,” she said.
She said the county has spent enough taxpayer money on purchasing private property and it should direct spending elsewhere.
Supervisor John McGlennon (Roberts) praised the program, pointing to a 2005 referendum where 76 percent of the county’s citizens voted in support of the PDR program.
“One of the reasons people like living here is because we’ve retained much of the rural atmosphere, and that is preserved by virtue in some cases of having open space available and for the ability to encourage folks to be able to continue in agriculture or silviculture,” McGlennon said. “That’s a good use of public dollars, especially when the public has ratified that kind of use of public dollars in the past.”
He said the program has protected some lands from being developed into residential communities, which would create new costs for the county in the form of increased demand for schools and other services.
Vice Chairman Kevin Onizuk (Jamestown) said the county’s financial situation does not allow for additional spending on land conservation.
“We don’t have funds to do much more than what we’ve already banked from our previous boards,” he said. “My consideration comes down to dollars and cents. If we are considering purchases and we can get some compensation, it makes financial sense to do so.”
For Chairman Michael Hipple (Stonehouse), the decision to vote yes was motivated by looking at what other communities have done.
“There’s a need for development, and there’s a need to balance that with protecting some of our natural area,” Hipple said. “York County doesn’t take any [PDR funds], but I also don’t want Route 17 through James City County. There’s a balance there. York County doesn’t even want Route 17. I’m not picking on York County, I’ve talked to some of them, but they wish they were able to control some of the things that have happened in that area.”
To participate in the program, landowners situated outside the Primary Service Area — a large swath of the county where more intense development is permitted — interested in participating in the program apply to the county to sell their development rights.
County staff then analyze each application, looking to factors like quality of the soils, the size of the land and the current risk of development before forwarding the applications to the board of supervisors for final approval.
The PDR Program is one of two ways the county seeks to preserve lands in the county amid a population boom that has about doubled in the past 30 years. While the PDR program targets lands outside the PSA, the Greenspace Program looks to lands within more developed parts of the county.
The Greenspace Program has a total of 1,288.4 acres, which the county has spent $20.95 million to preserve. Preservation in that program is achieved by either outright purchases of land or purchases of what are known as conservation easements. Those easements serve to preserve the land in perpetuity and shield it from development.
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