Money for farm preservation contingent on meeting new rules

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Harford County boasts the third-best agricultural preservation program in the state and one of the top 10 in the nation, but officials fretted recently over whether they could meet strict new guidelines to keep state funding.

Under the 2006 Agricultural Stewardship Act, counties that want to continue receiving state money to preserve farms from development have to designate priority preservation areas and present detailed plans for saving 80 percent of the undeveloped land within them.

But Harford was struggling to choose an area that has the right balance of preserved land and farms that can be saved — especially given the decline in home sales that pay for most agricultural preservation programs.

“A lot of people want to see the preservation area expanded,” said Pete Gutwald, Harford’s director of planning and zoning. “We should be innovative, but we also have to be realistic and financially manageable.”

If counties don’t meet the state’s criteria, their share of state tax funding will drop from 75 percent to 33 percent, and they’ll no longer be eligible to participate in other state programs, Gutwald said.

Howard County dropped out of the state program this past year, but not because of the stricter standards, said Kimberly Flowers, deputy director with Howard’s Department of Planning and Zoning.

As with Harford, part of Howard’s transfer tax goes toward the county’s preservation program, but officials had enough money in reserve that the economy has not yet had an effect, Flowers said.

Baltimore County will have no problem meeting the requirements because its preservation money comes from the county’s general fund, and it has enough undeveloped land to put into the program, said Land Preservation Administrator Walter Lippincott Jr.

Harford’s priority area will encompass 40,000 acres around the lower Deer Creek watershed, where the 80 percent goal is met by including parts of Susquehanna and Rocks state parks.

msantoni@baltimoreexaminer.com

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