Clark may adopt rights transfers to save farms
It looks like there could be a silver lining in Clark County when it comes to the new growth plan:
As our ideas about how we live our lives continue to evolve, having food sources close to population centers makes inherent sense on a lot of levels, transportation being the most obvious. But quality of product and having assurances that a product was grown locally also count.
It'll be interesting to see if this agreement is put into effect, and how well it works down the road.
Commissioners Steve Stuart and Marc Boldt have informally agreed to attempt to work out a deal where farmers can be paid to keep their land in agricultural production.While I've tried to follow the growth wars over the years, I'm certainly no expert. But at first glance it seems like a good idea to create incentives to keep some small farms in production. Fresh produce and fruit are wonderful things.
Developers would buy the development rights and use them to increase the density of urban projects. They would do that because larger projects are more profitable.
In addition to making property owners and developers happy, the rights transfer would solve a seemingly intractable dilemma for communities: It gives them a way to save agricultural land using little or no public funding.
In Washington, King, Snohomish and Thurston Counties have successfully made use of development rights transfers to protect areas critical to wildlife, open space, forest lands and agriculture.
As our ideas about how we live our lives continue to evolve, having food sources close to population centers makes inherent sense on a lot of levels, transportation being the most obvious. But quality of product and having assurances that a product was grown locally also count.
It'll be interesting to see if this agreement is put into effect, and how well it works down the road.
