The California Legislature originally passed the Williamson Act in 1965 “to preserve agricultural and open space lands by discouraging premature and unnecessary conversion to urban uses,” according to the state’s Department of Conservation website. The act allows for an arrangement whereby private landowners contract with counties and cities to voluntarily restrict their land to agricultural and compatible open-space uses. The agreements are governed by a rolling term 10-year contract. In return, counties assess property taxes at a rate consistent with the property’s actual use, rather than its potential market value.
According to the website, property owners save 20-75 percent annually on their property taxes. The eliminated state funds were largely paid to counties as reimbursement for the lost tax revenue.
Greg Plucker, deputy director of the county’s planning department, said when the county’s Williamson Act policies and contracts were first written, “very little was known about agricultural preserves and Williamson Act contracts.” Therefore, Plucker said, “the county’s existing policies provide very little guidance on how to go about administering this program.”
This lack of guidance and the elimination of funding from the state led to the creation of the working group. The group was charged with “reviewing the county’s Williamson Act program, its policies and the status of existing contracts to ensure the county’s program is functioning as well as possible and to support the county’s agricultural industry despite what was going on at the state level,” Plucker said Tuesday.
According to county documents,
the new proposed rules address
factors including but not limited
to:
• How agricultural preserves and
contracts are established;
• Defining qualifying agricultural
uses and compatible uses;
• Enforcement and monitoring
provisions;
• How and when contracts can or are
required to be modified; and
• The various factors involved with
terminating contracts.
Plucker said the policies will not
change how most contracts are
administered, but some changes have
been recommended. Proposed changes
include:
• Limiting qualifying uses within a
preserve to commercial agricultural
uses (which would not include the
growing or harvesting of timber);
• Implementation of new disclosure
information;
• Establishment of consistent
compliance review provisions;
• Limiting the number of contract
signatories to a single
family/business entity; and
• Requiring that contracts be
amended upon sale if not held by a
single family/business entity.
Several Williamson Act contract holders offered oral comments to the board regarding the proposed changes. Among the comments, objection to the exclusion of timber production was the most common.
Scott Valley rancher Cliff Munson told the board that it’s “important, especially for Scott Valley ranchers, to have the timber land clause put back in there ...”
Munson said many ranchers in that area have multi-use properties that only have livestock grazing during part of the year. He was concerned that “if the ag land that has timber on it is not included as ag land, someone else’s interpretation 20 years from now could be totally different than what we’re discussing here today.”
Plucker and the board acknowledged the prevalence of concerns over excluding timber production and agreed to eliminate that proposed ammendment to the rules.
Supervisors Cook, Armstrong and Kobseff also raised concerns over the possibility of marijuana production being considered as an agricultural enterprise under the provisions of the new contract rules. Plucker said there are currently no marijuana growers under contract with the county’s program. He said if a buyer purchased a Williamson Act property and proposed growing marijuana on the land, that would be considered a change of use and would be subject to review.
Siskiyou County Counsel Tom Guarino said including a provision prohibiting commercial marijuana production would, in some ways, be a restatement of current law because marijuana production is still illegal under federal law. However, Guarino said he would like to review the provision to assure its legal defensibility.
The board unanimously approved the new policy recommendations on the condition that language be clarified regarding marijuana production, conservation easements, game animal production and the re-inclusion of timber production.