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An article in the Whidbey Examiner reports County Commissioner Helen Price-Johnson is considering reducing the tax used to fund the Conservation Futures Fund.* The tax is 6-1/4¢ per $1000 of assessed property value. A house assessed at $250,000 pays about $15 a year. The money can only be used to acquire land and development rights for conservation of open space and farmland. The program was originally started by Republican county commissioners in the early 1990s and every Board of County Commissioners since then has strongly supported the program.
The Conservation Futures Fund leverages a huge amount of state and federal matching funds. For instance, the Whidbey-Camano Land Trust wants to purchase development rights on farmland on Ebey's Prairie this year for $250,000 That $250,000 will bring in another $3,750,000 in state and federal matching funds to complete this purchase of farmland preservation development rights.
The Conservation Futures program has funded the purchase of (for example) Ayla Spit on north Whidbey, portions of the Greenbank Farm on central Whidbey, Double Bluff Beach access on south Whidbey, and the Davis Slough Heron Rookery (the largest in Puget Sound) on Camano Island.
Reducing Conservation Futures now is penny-wise, pound-foolish. Now is exactly the time to purchase land and development rights for conservation, because land prices have dropped. Not buying land and development rights for parks, open space, wildlife habitat, and farmland now means paying more later in land costs, forgone opportunities, and taxes to support services for development on land that would otherwise have been conserved. And the actual amount that any property owner pays for Conservation Futures is piddling. Even the owner of a million dollar house only pays about $60 a year.
Tell the Island County Commissioners to maintain the Conservation Futures Fund at the maximum amount. This may be discussed at the next commissioner's meeting on Monday, August 18. Email them before then:
