||| FROM SANDI FRIEL for RENEW OUR LAND BANK COMMITTEE |||
Left to right: Former Land Bank Commissioners Christa Campbell and Sandi Friel are co-leading the campaign to “Renew Our Land Bank.” Photo taken at the Land Bank’s Deer Harbor Waterfront Preserve.
A team of 50 islanders is hard at work ensuring voters say ‘Yes’ in November to renew funding to keep the San Juan County Conservation Land Bank protecting and maintaining conservation areas in the county. If the measure passes at the polls, a separate source of funding for local affordable housing would also be preserved.
Led by former Land Bank Commissioners Christa Campbell from Lopez and Sandi Friel from Orcas, the Renew Our Land Bank committee includes volunteers from a variety of backgrounds. “We have farmers, builders, teachers, affordable housing advocates, business owners, artists, realtors and others working together towards this important cause,” says Campbell, who served as a Land Bank Commissioner from 2013 to 2023.
First approved by voters in 1990 and reauthorized in 1999 and 2011, the 1% Conservation Real Estate Excise Tax (REET) that funds the Land Bank is paid at closing by purchasers of property in San Juan County. With the Conservation REET set to sunset in 2026, and the Home Fund for affordable housing dependent on its continued existence, the County Council has approved placing a 12-year extension of Conservation REET on the November 5th general election ballot.
Friel says the Council’s approval at its July 9th meeting was the catalyst for the committee to kick off its citizen education campaign, starting with an informative website RenewOurLandBank.com.
“Many people think the Land Bank’s only function is to preserve trails and pretty views,” says Friel, who was a Land Bank Commissioner from 2018 to 2023. “The website brings to life the stories of how the Land Bank is protecting our drinking water, forests, shorelines, working farms and wildlife habitat, and the efforts underway to prevent big wildfires. It shows how the Land Bank enhances our quality of life and future resilience.”
Campbell says the website also explains the Land Bank’s critical link to local affordable housing. “There’s a rumor going around that the Land Bank is driving up the cost of island housing, and that’s not true. In fact, the Land Bank supports housing affordability in several ways.”
State law allows counties with a 1% Conservation REET to adopt a 0.5% Housing REET for Affordable Housing. San Juan County voters approved the Housing REET in 2018 and since that time it’s helped raise funds to provide and preserve 132 affordable homes for islanders.
“If the Conservation REET ends in 2026, then the Housing REET ends, too, and with it a big source of funding to keep our housing affordable,” says Campbell.
All local affordable housing organizations are supporting the ballot measure to renew the Land Bank’s funding, as are the family resource centers, Council candidates, many businesses and other non-profits. Learn more at www.RenewOurLandBank.com.
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Oh how I wish I stilll voted in San Juan County! What a pleasure it would be to vote for the Land Bank, maybe the best thing to happen to San Juan County in decades. They’re the real deal and have done so much good, thank you everyone involved, including you voters.
“If the Conservation REET ends in 2026, then the Housing REET ends, too”
Emphasize this! – “the Housing REET ends, too”
Funding contributed to 132 affordable housing units, not from property taxes but from property sales at the time of sale, will be no more without an extension.
I will vote no. The time to sunset this idea has arrived.
Read the original charter; this thing has morphed into an activism funding mechanism used for other purposes than the original intent.
The Land Bank has done a remarkable job of preserving open space in these islands, which is necessary to foster island flora and fauna — and giving islanders the opportunity to enjoy them, from an appropriate distance. Anyone who, like me, has hiked the trails on Turtleback Mountain understands these benefits to one and all.
Supporting the Land Bank makes sense. The value of everyone’s property is increased and more important the quality of life in the islands is improved. Big thank you to Sandi Friel for her service and leadership!
The preservation of Coho Reserve, a stunningly beautiful natural resource, would by itself lead me to support renewal of Land Bank funding. But the Land Bank has done so much more to preserve critical habitats across all the major islands. That this funding mechanism also leads to critically-needed affordable housing is a bonus that deserves community-wide support.
Thank you to Suzana Roach for providing this great photo of Turtleback Mountain for us to use!
Many years ago I was involved with Nantucket’s land bank, the first public land bank in the country, which was able to preserve much of that island’s natural open land and beauty in the face of an unprecedented building boom. In 1990, San Juan Islands citizens had the great foresight to approve our own Conservation Land Bank–the only one in the state of Washington.
At the end of last year, the Land Bank Commission engaged in a new strategic plan, guided by the responses to two public surveys, to chart the Land Bank’s course over the next several years. The plan can be found at https://sjclandbank.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/WEB_SJCCLB-2024-2030-Strategic-Plan.pdf.
The Land Bank’s Vision and Mission are:
Vision: Conserving the Islands’ best places.
Mission: To protect and steward the islands’ natural and cultural heritage and provide access to nature close to home.
We greatly admire the Marin CA MALT program and the appreciate that the SJC Land Bank is one of the most valuable asset in our local communities. We’d like to see it not only continue, but also develop an agricultural land trust arm for more preserves like Coffelt that protect our ag heritage. If you’ve watched other rural communities lose their open space to development, with a broken heart, you know what a jewel our Land Bank is.
At the same time, the Affordable Housing percent could be doubled to really increase livability for our essential worker housing needs. Both are outstanding innovations SJC residents can be proud of.
And the Land Bank is fostering biodiversity by actively managing their acquisitions! Goals include removing invasive plants, restoring Garry Oak habitats by thinning the competing Douglas Fir, and reducing wildfire risks. I have learned so much from observing the Land Bank habitat restoration work. Biodiversity has been vanishing since the arrival of settlers displaced the First Peoples who had wisely managed the land to maintain food production and other resources. We need to pay attention and actively work to reverse biodiversity losses. I am doing my bit on my 5 acres. I feel happy when working outdoors.
Marcy and Janet, both true, and thank you both. Marcy, you may not know that the Land Bank already protects 1,300 acres of farmland through conservation easements helping current farmers keep farming, and outright ownership. 500 of the 700 acres the Land Bank owns outright are leased to family farmers like the Lums. A new project on San Juan will lease agricultural land at Beaverton Marsh to the San Juan Ag Guild to be used by a number of different farmers.
I personally couldn’t agree more that the current 1/2% Home Fund REET should be doubled. That would take an act of the legislature along with local approval. Since I mentioned Nantucket earlier, I’ll note that Nantucket’s land bank was established with a 2% REET, which is permanent and doesn’t require renewal. Our own Land Bank is subject to the review, approval and support of San Juan County citizens.
Thank you, Phil Peterson, for pointing out that the housing REET will expire in 2026 too if the conservation REET ends. Anyone who says this has morphed into some kind of activism thing has not followed the same politics that I have for the 4+ decades I have… conservation has been shoved under the rug for so long, as has quality of life and rural character. I would vote Yes for the Land Bank and housing REETs to continue. We need both housing AND conservation; they are not mutually exclusive!
I will add something unpopular, despite my support of the Land Bank:
Both the Land Bank/Friends of the San Juans and property ‘rights’ folks may take offense – but I think it needs saying again and again.
My one frustration with the Land Bank (and Friends of the San Juans) is how little they have focused on saving riparian wetland habitat and nearshore environments in UGAs (Urban Growth Areas) – particularly in Eastsound UGA, where environmental protections have been almost completely gutted, conditional and provisional permits are deemed not needed for most any permit, and we have nearshore environments on both sides of Eastsound Swale contiguous wetland, which is only a mile wide from North Beach to Fishing Bay. These were and are worth some attention and preservation.
Mine and others’ pleas to the County for decades to protect and preserve some of this have been ignored – it would have been better than allowing the mushrooming of a glut of vacation rentals on our precious watershed. I got sympathetic listening and ‘i hear you’s’ whenever I tried, but… do they hear us and really understand what’s at stake? Where is the Public outreach and incentives for people to do the right thing by the land they own? We could have done so much in these last 30-40 years. I’ve only seen more and more degradation and all infrastructure forced into being here. We could have, many times over, reframed out take on the GMA. Why didn’t we? Why would we put downtown Seattle densities in our commercial district, for instance? Yes it’s complicated and getting more so. Why wait even longer to address?
It isn’t that I don’t appreciate the rest of their efforts; I do, and we need them. As I said in the previous comment, I fully support the Conservation and Housing REETs and don’t argue their necessity.
But why skirt the importance of one of the most (formerly) biodiverse forested wetland watersheds and allow the desertification of the area by permitting the forests all around and upslope to be clearcut for more and more development of luxury condos and vacation rentals, when businesses close due to lack of even remotely affordable housing for employees? Come on down to Eastsound this fire season and eat our dust! (It swirls in the winds and there is nothing to hold back the ‘city dirt’ anymore. Add to that stormwater and what we know now about tire dust – all going into Fishing Bay through piping it instead of using the natural forests we had for filtration. I remain gobsmacked over all of this.
In a perfect world, we would have set up Eastsound UGA as a LAMIRD and the villages as hamlets, allowing more activity and housing in those places. Can we please share the load you are asking the UGAs to take? In the event of a disaster I would love to know there is some infrastructure outside of a flood and liquefaction zone at near sea level.