Demand growing, but county funding for conservation easements dwindling

By Brandon Shulleeta

Published: September 9, 2008

Preserving Albemarle County’s natural assets and beauty — by purchasing development rights from owners of rural pristine property — is something the Board of Supervisors ranked as one of its most important goals. However, the county is finding its preservation goals increasingly difficult to afford.

Some conservation experts say the county should consider using alternative funding, such as bonds.

“When you’re in a big county like Albemarle and you’re running out of funds,” you probably need to have some different options to pay for conservation easements, said Pat O’Connell, the founder of Evergreen Capital Advisors Inc.

O’Connell said that an economic downturn presents some advantages for funding conservation easements.

“With the slowing real estate market, this is a great opportunity,” O’Connell said, explaining that the drop could cause landowners to be more likely to agree to sell their development rights.

Bonds are among options that could allow the county to continue preserving rural pristine property, despite the economic crunch, O’Connell said at a Sept. 3 Board of Supervisors meeting. O’Connell presented several possible funding options to the board, including installment purchase agreements.

O’Connell said that he hasn’t made any formal funding recommendations to the Board of Supervisors but instead wanted to present options for supervisors to consider.

A summary prepared by county staff stated: “Given long term property value trends, development trends and the

county’s strategic objectives to protect its resources through conservation easements, it may be prudent to consider additional methods of funding the program at this time.”

County staff noted in the summary: “the acreage that the county is able to actually place under easement each year has steadily declined.”

Supervisor Sally H. Thomas said that using bonds to fund conservation easements was an idea that was considered in the past but rejected because the county didn’t want to put itself in debt or have to pay interest. However, she said that preserving rural property is important to the county and that it’s worthwhile to rethink funding options.

In Albemarle, most enter into conservation easements through organizations such as the Nature Conservancy, the Piedmont Environmen-tal Council, the Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District and the Virginia Outdoors Association, county spokeswoman Lee Catlin said. However, a program established by the Board of Supervisors in 2000, the Acquisition of Conservation Easements program, gives county money for the development rights of rural property.

The ACE program has exceeded 5,000 acres. In total, more than 70,000 acres are in conservation easements in the county.

For the first six years of the ACE program, the funding level was $1 million per year. It the past two years, funding has been set at one cent of every $100 value of assessed real estate, with funding totaling about $1.4 million for fiscal 2006-07 and $1.6 million for fiscal 2007-08.

However, since the formation of the ACE program, more people have become interested in selling their development rights in Albemarle, according to the county staff summary, and easement values have risen between 200 percent and 300 percent since the program’s implementation. As a result, the ACE program hasn’t been able to meet as many of the county’s demands for conservation easements as the county would like, officials said.

Albemarle was recently recognized for conserving pristine rural land.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine visited Beaver Creek Reservoir in July, where he said Albemarle County was the leader in Virginia for conserving farmland and forests.

The reservoir Kaine visited borders a 228-acre family farm whose owners sold their development rights for more than $1.3 million. The family was the first to benefit from a state conservation easement program that matches grants offered by the county. The state gave the owner of the family farm $403,220 in addition to the $914,000 they received from the county.