Protect local agriculture
Posted May 31, 2005 / Updated September 12, 2010

• Background    
• What's happening
• Why this is important
• What you can do    

California has a 40-year-old law designed to protect agricultural lands and open space from urbanization. Unfortunately, its implementation is challenging throughout the state. CGF is working to help enforce this law locally, and keep our ranch and farmlands from development.

Please ask the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors to enforce the Williamson Act and protect our agricultural heritage.

Background
In 1965, the State Legislature enacted the California Land Conservation Act (aka the Williamson Act) as a way to protect agricultural lands from urbanization. Under the Act, a landowner can voluntarily agree to retain lands in agriculture or other open space use for ten years or more. In exchange, the landowner receives a significant reduction in property taxes on the property.

These contracts are renewed automatically unless the landowner gives a ten-year notice of non-renewal, at which point the property taxes gradually increase until they reach full value. Landowners can also under certain circumstances cancel Williamson Act contracts, but this comes with a hefty penalty.

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What's happening
More than 40% of the land in Santa Clara County (some 362,000 acres) is under Williamson Act contract. Unfortunately, the County has not done a good job of enforcing these contracts.

The County has allowed development and subdivisions on some of these properties, leading to direct and indirect harm to local farming and ranching. These landowners are not upholding their end of the bargain to keep these lands in agricultural use — but are enjoying their tax breaks.

Developers are arguing that because the County did not enforce the Act’s provisions in the past, it should never enforce them. This is a recipe for continued development of our ranch and farm lands.

In addition, developers support a loophole that allows them to transfer property currently under Williamson Act contract into a temporary 10-year open space easement — which, for some properties, facilitates development and further threatens our agricultural heritage.

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Why this is important
Landowners who do not comply with their Williamson Act contracts are cheating taxpayers and harming the entire region by allowing our agricultural heritage to slip away.

CGF is asking the County to find a way to make sure that local agriculture is adequately protected as intended by the Williamson Act.

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What you can do

1. Speak up!
Join us in asking the County Supervisors and the Housing, Land Use, Environment and Transportation (HLUET) Committee to:

1. Enforce the County’s Williamson Act contracts and protect our ranch and farm lands.
2. Keep all of the development restrictions on Williamson Act parcels that are transferred to Open Space easements.
3. Allow parcels under 10 acres to be transferred to Open Space Easements only if they remain undeveloped. Anything else contradicts the meaning of open space.

Write to:
   Clerk of the Board of Supervisors
   70 W. Hedding Street
   10th Floor, East Wing
   San Jose, CA 95110

   Fax (408) 298-8460
   email Phyllis.perez@cob.sccgov.org

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