Citizens To Preserve The Reserve, Montgomery County Agricultural Reserve

Montgomery County Council Passes Legislation To Help Prevent
"Fragmentation" Of County Ag Reserve
November 18, 2008 the Montgomery County Council passed Bill 39-07, legislation which CPR has strongly supported. It locks in the "Building Lot Termination" program, or BLT, that will prevent the inappropriate development or "suburbanization" of farmland within the County's Agricultural Reserve.

An excellent explanation of the legislation was set out in County Councilman Mike Knapp's Open Mike newsletter:

The bill “authorizes the County to purchase agricultural land preservation easements at the State and County level.” It aligns our County’s policies with those of the State, while still remaining true to the principles of the Agricultural Reserve.

That’s a complicated way of saying we’ve made some changes and clarifications in county law to ensure that the Agricultural Reserve remains devoted to farming, and unblemished by scattered development.

In 1980, the County down-zoned farmland to preserve farming. Before this zoning decision, the construction of one house was allowed on every five acres; after the preservation decision, one house was allowed on every 25 acres. To reduce the financial loss to farmland owners, the County gave land owners transferable development rights (TDRs). One TDR was given for every 5 acres of land. These rights could be sold to landowners in certain urbanized areas. The urbanized landowners who bought TDRs were then allowed to build additional dwelling units on their property.

Not all TDRs are the same; if the farm landowner retains one TDR on every 25 acres of land, the landowner can still build houses. This “buildable” TDR is more valuable to the farmland owners than market price paid for all other TDRs. The vast majority of farmland owners retained their “buildable” TDRs. Some used this right to construct houses on their property.

The construction of suburban houses in the agricultural reserve makes it more difficult to farm. The County intends to give farmland owners the option of compensation for a “buildable” TDR instead of allowing a house to be constructed in the middle of farmland. This new idea is called the Building Lot Termination (BLT) Program. The goal of the program is to reduce the number of allowable houses in the agricultural reserve and provide full compensation to farmland owners for the reduced housing density.

The basics of the BLT easement policy are already provided for in State law; Bill 39-07 ensures that our own county policies, as they pertain to the Ag Reserve, are aligned with those of the state.