County proposes criteria for Williamson Act; eviction notices
likely in January
The county inched closer Monday to evicting thousands of property owners, recipients of questionable tax breaks under a state law intended to preserve agriculture, from Williamson Act protection.
At a Housing and Land Use Committee meeting Monday, Santa Clara County Agriculture Commissioner Greg Van Wassenhove and Supervisor Don Gage unveiled interim guidelines that say Williamson Act contracts apply only to parcels of at least 10 acres of prime farmland – typically valley floor land able to support orchards or row crops – or 40 acres of non-prime grazing land.
Most horse operations will not be considered agriculture. Additionally, prime land parcels must generate at least $3,500 of farm income annually. The minimum for non-prime land would be $2,000. If approved by the full Board of Supervisors, the interim guidelines would be used until new ones are finalized later this year.
“These are only suggestions. We have to have guidelines to go by as we move this process forward,” Gage said at a meeting of the county’s Housing Land Use, Environment and Transportation Committee. “There are always some people who are going to be disappointed. If we threw out all the rules and regulations, somebody would be unhappy with us.”
Supervisors also will vote on whether to suspend any new applications to the Williamson Act this year, an idea endorsed at Tuesday’s meeting by both Gage and Supervisor Pete McHugh.
Setting a January deadline to mail non-renewal notices will allow the county to cleanse its books of non-compliant William-son contracts by 2007, five years after it was first directed by the state to properly enforce the law.
“I’m really going to push non-renewal,” Jenny Derry, executive director of the Santa Clara County Farm Bureau, said, referring to parcels that don’t meet minimum acreages. “A blanket non-renewal is the only way to clean up this mess.”
The mess is the nearly 1,200 property owners who may be receiving an illegal tax break, often as much as several thousand dollars annually, intended for farmers.
Under the 1965 Williamson Act, property owners receive a tax break in exchange for maintaining a farming enterprise or preserving particular types of open space. But over the last 30 years, the county has allowed legion illegal subdivisions.
As properties have been sold and developed, agriculture has vanished from the county, but the tax breaks have stayed in place. Former grazing lands, like Golden Heights, east of Gilroy, and the San Martin Estates, have been converted to ranchette-style home sites.
The county has never had an official set of criteria to evaluate contract applications and building approvals under Williamson.
The vast majority of the nearly 3,000 Williamson parcels in the county are related to non-prime land. Of the 1,172 that don’t meet minimum size requirements, 893 are non-prime. Of the 1,172 parcels, 501 have been developed.
Realtors are pushing for a state-sponsored amnesty that would allow home builders an exemption from the onerous penalty that comes with cancelling a Williamson contract.
Efforts by Gage and Van Wassenhove to find state lawmakers willing to sponsor or back that legislation have been unsuccessful. Gage said that he doesn’t expect help from the state, but told the landowners at Monday’s meeting that “maybe there’s a compromise there someplace.”
Now that the proposed interim criteria have been endorsed by supervisors Gage and McHugh, they will be considered by the five-member board of supervisors later this month.
Under a timeline presented Monday by Van Wassenhove, a stakeholders group of ranchers, Realtors and open space interests convened in February will meet again this summer to draw up final recommendations for treating existing contract holders. Van Wassenhove, Lindsay and Derry are all members of that task force.
Under the timeline, the board of supervisors would adopt final contract guidelines in October and authorize the county planning office to issue non-renewal notices based on parcel size. All landowners would have the opportunity to demonstrate why they should be allowed to remain in the act. All contracts that do not meet requirements would be formally non-renewed in November 2006.
Gilroy Dispatch reporter Matt King can be reached at mk***@gi************.com or 847-7240.
