County board eyes farmlands Tuesday Nov. 16, 2009 The Langlade County Board of Supervisors will hold what is expected to be a quiet meeting Tuesday heading into the holiday season.
The session starts at 9 a.m. on the lower level of the Safety Building with the main piece of business an ordinance that could change the status of some agricultural lands.
The board will consider creating a general farm zone, called A-2, that will allow agricultural production crops, livestock forestry and other sundry uses.
It is an action to shift some lands from the rather onerous restrictions placed on agricultural lands, rated A-1 when they are shifted from production of farm products to housing and business purposes.
The action has impacts on the holders of agricultural lands — most of them — for a more flexible use of the lands.
At a series of meetings, Rebecca Frisch, the county’s zoning adminstrator, has been explaining the program.
Under the old farmland preservation plan, farmers with land zoned as exclusive agriculture, or A-1, were eligible to receive income tax credits through the state of Wisconsin based on their income and property taxes. There were hoops to jump through, but the rules, developed over a series of years, were straightforward and understood by participants.
The Wisconsin Working Lands Initiative, passed almost as an afterthought in the state budget, has added many more hoops and fees but has also increased the payoff for farmers.
According to Frisch, the item of principal concern could be a new conversion fee that the state will require the counties to charge for rezoning any parcels from exclusive agriculture to less restrictive usage.
Under the new program, being proposed at the meeting, landowners wishing to take their land out of the exclusive designation will pay an average of $600 per acre, and that amount could add up fast. That amount is based on a complex schedule that charges property owners three times the highest agriculture use value per acre, which in Langlade County averages about $200.
The conversion fee must be paid regardless if the landowner ever received tax credits through farmland preservation. That could come as a surprise to many owners of long-idled farm fields or less-than-ideal acreage.
Frisch said her office is pouring over county maps and hs been meeting with the individual towns to make changes that may reduce the number of exclusive agriculture parcels, placing many parcels in less restrictive zones instead that are not subject to conversion fees.
“We’re changing the zoning for non-prime areas where the owners would be required to pay these conversion fees,” she said. “We’re trying to address the issue.”
The conversion fees will not go to the county. Instead, they will be placed in a program that will purchase agricultural conservation easements, another way to preserve farmland but not a popular option in the northwoods.
For farmers with prime A-1 acreage, the new initiative offers some perks. They include a per-acre tax credit ranging between $5 and $10 depending on if the farmland is identified as a farmland preservation area, if it is zoned exclusive agricultural and/or if it is in one of the new agricultural enterprise areas—large tracts of contiguous A-1 lands such as the Antigo flats.
While the zoning ordinance is the big issue, the board will also consider a resolution to refill a vacant social worker position in the long term support unit.
Under the consent agenda, the board will eye a switch in zoning on a parcel of land in the town of Polar from exclusive agriculture to agriculture, forestry and residential to allow construction of a home.
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