Farmland coordinator reports to council on $25,000 grant

Tim Clark, Farmland Preservation Coordinator for the County’s Agricultural Resources Committee, and Pete Rose, County Administrator, will present a report from (ARC) at Tuesday’s meeting of the County Counci, accounting for the $25,000 grant that was awarded to ARC last year.

The Office of Farmland Preservation (OFP) granted $25,000 to the ARC to be used for public outreach and education concerning farmland preservation.

Goals were set for public presentations, individual contacts, media outreach and the mapping of agricultural areas in the county.

The Executive Summary of the report reads:

In January 2008, San Juan County was awarded a grant (Grant # 08-San Juan OFP-01) from the OFP for $25,000. By accepting the grant, the county agreed to :

1. submit several articles to the local media,
2. produce and distribute an information card,
3. display advertisements regarding conservation easements, agricultural land designation, and farm planning,
4. hold at least five public town hall meetings,
5. begin an inventory of farmland,
6. develop an ‘early warning system’ in conjunction with the San Juan County Assessor,
7. meet with community groups,
8. contact individual landowners,
9. assess funding needs for conservation easements, and
10. report on the outcomes of these efforts.

With the exceptions of the ‘early warning system’ and funding assessment, the grantee met or exceeded the deliverables. Considerable time and effort was expended on public education during a countywide audit of the Agricultural Open Space (AOS) tax program. The necessity to contact every AOS landowner resulted in a substantial number of individual contacts and the ongoing revision of the county’s Public Benefit Rating System, written specifically to preserve the farmland in danger of removal from the AOS program.

The report states that the next steps are:

1. Continuation of the mapping program, with maps probably available in the spring of 2009. These maps will detail farmland, agricultural products, and farmland at risk of conversion.
2. Continued monthly articles to the local newspaper from the ARC

The five-page report, which can be accessed here concludes by saying:

“The OFP grant was extremely helpful to San Juan County. Work was evenly divided between the areas of media outreach, individual contact, public presentations, and mapping. Administration costs were less than ten percent. In addition to its benefits for individual farmland owners and the general public, this grant had a major influence on San Juan County’s policy of farmland preservation over the past year. Continued efforts will focus on agricultural land mapping to provide data for land use changes and farmland at risk of conversion.”