New rules for landowners should begin in May
San Jose – It took four years for county leaders to develop new rules to control the Williamson Act. Now the really hard work begins – enforcing them.
“No matter what we do we can’t make everybody happy,” Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage said. “No matter what we passed, it’s not going to fit into somebody’s shoe.”
The Williamson Act is a state law that provides a property tax break in exchange for keeping land in agricultural production. Four years ago, an audit by the California Department of Conservation found the county had not been administering the law properly, allowing myriad subdivisions that made “farmers” out of rural homeowners who pocketed tax breaks – up to several thousand dollars a year – but don’t engage in agriculture. The DOC can refuse to cover the lost tax revenue if the county doesn’t enforce the rules.
A year ago, the county finally began addressing the problem, and Tuesday, after a year of often raucous meetings overrun with aggrieved landowners, the county supervisors adopted new guidelines for the act.
The updated rules are intended to clarify who does and does not deserve the act’s protection and ensure the county complies with the law. They call for the eviction of all parcels that don’t meet the act’s minimum size requirements of 10 acres for prime land, which is suitable for most row crops and orchards, and 40 for non-prime land, which is typically used for ranching.
The rules do allow many landowners the option of creating a farm use or transferring their property into the Open Space Easement Act, a parallel state law with fewer restrictions that provides a less-generous tax break. About 1,200 of the county’s 3,000 Williamson parcels don’t comply with the law.
The new rules allow people to qualify to remain in the act by meeting the size requirement or an income requirement. For example, if a small parcel is more than half-covered with a high-income crop such as grapes, it may qualify for the Williamson tax break.
The guidelines will be formally adopted in May in the form of a resolution, a procedural strategy to give the county room to manipulate the rules in unique situations. Gage estimated that about 200 property owners will protest the guidelines.
“We will have the ability to change some of the items we talked about today,” Gage said. “We’re going to pick up a majority the people, we’re going to kick out the ones taking advantage of it, and the ones that are left, we’ll deal with.”
Jenny Derry, the executive director of the Santa Clara County farm Bureau, who helped craft the guidelines, say the rules will not interfere with legitimate farmers and ranchers.
“They protect commercial agriculture very well and that’s really what the Williamson Act is all about,” Derry said. “I’m happy they provide people who are trying to make a living farming ample flexibility so most operations will be covered.”
Not everyone is satisfied. There are many who say the county is trying to unlawfully alter contracts that are decades old. And even those landowners who want to be evicted from the act must wait 10 years before they can develop the property unless they want to pay a huge fine. Since the county began monitoring Williamson properties three years ago, many landowners who bought property under Williamson contracts have not been able to get building permits because they do not farm.
“This is a disappointing day for every existing holder of a Williamson Act contract in the county,” San Jose land-use attorney Barton Hechtman told the supervisors. “The county doesn’t have the right to unilaterally change them or add terms to how they are administered.”
And the county’s plan to transfer potentially hundred of parcels into the Open Space easement Act has raised red flags among environmentalists and officials at the Department of Conservation who say they’ll act to block a mass transfer of Williamson properties.
Supervisor Blanca Alvarado said the transfers must be monitored closely to ensure they are legitimate.
“It has the potential, and I don’t like to use this word, for misuse,” Alvarado said. “The staff has to be very, very on top of that. We are experimenting so it will be very important, to me at least, to know if it is working.”
The new rules will become law in May. In the meantime, Williamson Act contract holders will be notified if they are due to be evicted and receive instructions on how to transfer to the open space program. All evictions and other planning staff decisions regarding Williamson properties may be appealed to the county supervisors.
What is the Williamson Act?
Also known as the California Land Conservation Act, Williamson is a 1965 law intended to protect farmland by giving farmers a property tax break and reducing incentives to develop the land. More than three years after a state audit found that Santa Clara County has never properly administered the law, county supervisors have adopted new rules to ensure that only legitimate farmers are covered.
What are the new rules?
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A concrete definition of what constitutes agricultural use of land
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Stricter development guidelines on Williamson lands
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All parcels that don’t meet the act’s size or farm income requirements will be evicted and lose the tax break
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New fees and procedures to ensure Williamson Act lands are monitored and used properly
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Allowing parcels of at least five acres to transfer into the state’s Open Space Easement program.
