Siskiyou becomes first county to act on land program

Issue Date: August 19, 2009

By Steve Adler

In a move designed to send a strong message of support to farmers and ranchers, the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously last week to pick up the shortfall in Williamson Act funding that was created when state support for the program was vetoed out of the 2009-2010 budget.

In Siskiyou County, that amounts to $780,000 in state subvention funds that will have to be absorbed through cuts in other county programs. Since 1971, subvention funds had been given to counties by the state to help offset some of the reduction in property tax revenue from land enrolled in the program.

"The Williamson Act would have renewed anyway, but we wanted to take affirmative action and put it in writing that we were going to renew these agreements, so that everybody knew that was one thing they could stop worrying about," said county supervisor Marcia Armstrong of Scott Valley.

Siskiyou is the first county to take action in response to the loss of state funds. Several other California counties are looking at maintaining the program or taking a wait-and-see attitude, but have not yet taken action. They include Napa, San Mateo, Sonoma, Tulare and Yolo counties.

The act was created more than 40 years ago as a land conservation program. Established in nearly every county in California, the program protects more than 16.5 million acres of farmland. Under its provisions, landowners agree to maintain their land in agriculture for at least 10 years and the counties agree to tax the land based on its agricultural income, its acquisition value under Proposition 13 or its current market value, whichever is lower.

"In our county, the farmers and ranchers don't just represent a small production segment, they are also the people who support our local stores. Agriculture is just so entwined into the fabric of our local communities. The open space makes Siskiyou County. Without farming and ranching we'd be cutting our own throats, so supporting them is the natural thing for us to do," Armstrong said.

Several ranchers attended last week's meeting in Yreka. They expressed appreciation for the county supervisors' taking a stand in support of the land preservation act.

"This vote was a victory for everyone except perhaps the supervisors, if the state doesn't enter back into the subvention funds," said Jim Morris, Etna rancher and president of the Siskiyou County Farm Bureau. "Our supervisors took a risk and I think they need to be applauded for the risk that they took. They know that there is a possibility that funding may not come back, but we are trying to reassure them that Farm Bureau is taking this issue head on, to get that funding back to the counties before they find themselves in a real deficit situation."

Morris said the reason the Williamson Act was created in the first place, and why it is important that it continue to function, is because everyone thought it was a good idea to set agricultural land aside and not develop it.

"For that very same reason today, we shouldn't be coming out of these contracts and then considering developing this prime agricultural land," he said. "If we move out of these contracts, it may become appealing to some landowners to break pieces of farms and ranches off and sell them for development.

"The people of this state need to realize that without the Williamson Act, we would be losing a lot more of our prime agricultural land a lot quicker than we are now," he said.

Montague rancher Jack Cowley, president of the Siskiyou County Cattlemen's Association, addressed the supervisors prior to their vote last week. He spoke strongly in support of maintaining the current level of support for the Williamson Act.

"One of the comments that I made to the supervisors is that we need agriculture in this state and in the United States and if we keep losing all of our agricultural land, we are going to become even more dependent on importing food. And when we import food, we lose our safeguards in terms of health and safety, and the cost of our food is going to go up," he said.

Cowley went on to say that there is optimism on the part of many people who are hopeful that the state Legislature and governor will find a way to put the subvention funds back into the state budget.

"I really believe it will be resolved and I believe it is the will of the Legislature to have the Williamson Act. I think they will find a way to keep it going," he said. "The supervisors are talking about having to eliminate 10 jobs. Well, it's not just 10 jobs, it is 10 families that are going to be affected by this. And those families are going to lose their purchasing power. It was a tough choice for the supervisors and for them to make that choice it was amazing and to their credit."

Cowley said that it is important that agricultural land be preserved for food production in the future, and the Williamson Act is an important tool because it allows the farmers and ranchers—the people who produce food—to stay in business.

"The land down in the Central Valley is being gobbled up by subdivisions and other development, and that is agricultural land that is being lost," he said.

Armstrong, too, said she understands the role the act plays. She said she can recall seeing firsthand what happens when agricultural land is converted to other uses.

"When I was in my 20s, I lived on the coast in Half Moon Bay. I watched all of that land that was in artichokes being converted to subdivisions, so I am quite aware of what can happen," said Armstrong, who served as executive director of Siskiyou County Farm Bureau and Siskiyou County Cattlemen's Association prior to being elected to the county board of supervisors.

(Steve Adler is associate editor of Ag Alert. He may be contacted at sadler@cfbf.com.)

Permission for use is granted, however, credit must be made to the California Farm Bureau Federation when reprinting this item. Top