Economic downturn means deep cuts in county land conservation program

Albemarle County spent $1 million or more per year between 2000 and 2008 on a program designed to protect rural land from development through conservation easements.
“After 10 years running the [Acquisition of Conservation Easements] program, we’ve protected 37 properties and 7,200 acres from future development,” program coordinator Ches Goodall recently told county supervisors. “Seventy percent have been work-ing family farms. For many of these landowners, I feel like ACE has been a real godsend.”

The economic downturn, however, has reduced funding for the program.
According to county officials, the budget for fiscal 2011 includes only $366,000 for ACE, which is coming from the county’s capital improvements funds.
The easements are voluntary agreements that allow landowners to limit permanently the type and amount of development on their property while retaining private ownership and gaining access to state tax credits.

“At the state level, the General Assembly made this Virginia land preservation tax credit program a program that was explic-itly designed to be able to benefit landowners across the economic spectrum by making these tax credits transferable,” said Rex Linville of the Piedmont Environmental Council.
“If you don’t have a high income, you are actually able to sell your tax credits to somebody else who might have a high income and might be able to use them,” Linville added. “So even landowners of lower income levels are able to get a lot of benefit out of putting a conservation easement on their properties and selling those tax credits to other landowners.”
In the year 2000, there were only 17,000 acres of permanently protected private land in the county. Ten years later there are more than 81,000 acres protected.
“That’s largely as a result of great financial incentives either through sale of easement, through the ACE program, or for do-nated easements,” said Linville.
“We can’t use that success to think that we can now sit back … and say we’ve done a great thing,” Linville said. “Virginia is losing farm and forestland at the rate of 50,000 acres per year. … Permanent conservation easements are one of the few tools that we have available to preserve those resources.”

At last week’s board meeting, Goodall said the county had received an additional grant of $61,000 from Farmland Preserva-tion to supplement efforts to obtain easements.
Properties that qualify for easements are chosen by a ranking evaluation system created to award points for a number of dif-ferent values such as open space resources and threat of conversion to development.
“The ACE program is a means-tested program. You get more money if you’re in a lower income bracket than if you’re in a higher income bracket,” Supervisor Dennis S. Rooker said.

However, there are generally more applicants for the ACE program than money available. County staff recently wrote in a report that the program will suffer if additional funds cannot be found to accommodate demand.
The county’s goal is to qualify 90,000 acres of public parkland and conservation easements by June 30. There are currently 81,000 acres in conservation easements.
“I think we feel confident that we will be very close to the goal when we take everything into account,” county spokeswoman Lee Catlin said
Charlottesville Tomorrow is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization covering land-use and transportation issues in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.