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Heads Above Water
“I didn’t anticipate an attack on the whole system or accusations that we’re trying to avoid our tax responsibilities in this county," said H. L. Manwaring, one of the major landowners involved in the Red Oak district application. "We’re trying to keep our heads above water...There is a national effort to keep lands in agricultural and forestal production. If it doesn’t succeed, millions of acres will be diverted to development, parking lots and roads, reducing the agricultural base of this country.”
If farmers are forced to pay land taxes on the real estate value for speculative development rather than on the land’s value in agricultural production, then farmers will have to look at their property from the stand point of development, Manwaring said. “We could do a lot better if we sell our land...But soon we’d have Rappahannock County as a bedroom community for the towns around us rather than an agricultural county and a place of beauty.”
By banding together ti form agricultural districts, farmers are “trying to avoid the necessity of selling their land for real estate development,” he concluded.
Sean Kilpatrick noted that the county has a goal of discouraging subdivision development. To achieve that goal, “we have a stick in the form of a zoning ordinance, a carrot in the form of land use taxation and agricultural districts,” he said. With ag districts and land use, “we try to make it possible for farmers to keep on farming and not have to sell their farms for subdivisions.” He acknowledged that as a tool for preserving and protecting agriculture, neither is perfect. “But it’s the best we’ve got and we ought to take advantage of it...If we don’t want to see apple orchards bulldozed into subdivisions, this is a tool we can use.”
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